


turn your body out

by pumpkinless



Series: make me feel [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Begging, Blow Jobs, Body Shots, Dirty Talk, Drunkish Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Fingers In Mouths, Fisting, Frat Boy Shiro (Voltron), Light Choking/Breathplay, M/M, Making Out, Misunderstandings, Phone Sex, Riding, Rimming, Size Kink, Spanking, Target (USA), Teasing, The Running Man, Underage Drinking, author is going to hell but probably not for the reasons you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-06-28 15:25:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15709968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinless/pseuds/pumpkinless
Summary: Shiro finally manages a confession. Keith spends two days trying to tank it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is for ariana grande
> 
> now with an [official playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/tmwec387u6xznz1uqwvbnb0ic/playlist/6LdydV20uvrJnSwUC5TXOX?si=X7_cBxNbThCUc4ze432xQQ)!

“I swear to god, Keith, if you don’t put your phone away right this second—”

“Fuck off,” Keith says, stuffing his phone back in his pocket like he didn’t just pull it out to hide it under the table and check and see if Shiro—if  _ anyone _ had texted him, or if the noise was just some other random phone notification. 

“No,  _ you _ fuck off.”

“You’re not my mom.”

“No, but I’ve met your mom,” Pidge says, so severe that Keith feels like he needs to sit up straighter. “She would put up with even less of this bullshit.”

Keith’s phone vibrates with another text message, loud enough for Pidge to hear in the relatively empty cafeteria. Keith’s hand twitches with the need to check it, holding Pidge’s judgemental stare with equal annoyance and telling himself he doesn’t even care why his phone is blowing up. He  _ doesn’t  _ care. It doesn’t matter.

“Holy fuck,” Pidge mutters under her breath as his phone vibrates a fourth time, and Keith is inclined to agree.

“It’s probably just—”

“Don’t.” 

Keith pokes at his grayish hunk of meat. Fried chicken, the cafeteria promised him. He doesn’t see anything fried or particularly chickenish about it, and makes him swear his biweekly vow to opt for the vegan option with Pidge next time. It might be little more than a glorified salad made mostly of iceberg lettuce, but at least it looks like food a human might reasonably consume.

“Look,” Keith says as his phone vibrates twice more in quick succession, “I’ll put it on silent.”

Pidge gives one pained nod.

Keith tries to move as fast as possible, but he can’t not see that all six messages are from Shiro, even if he doesn’t read them.

“I’m never getting lunch with you again,” Pidge informs him. “As soon as we walk into that party tomorrow, I’m finding a new friend. A cooler friend, who doesn’t sext his boyfriend at the lunch table. I eat there, Keith.”

Oh, god.

Keith resists the urge to put his head down, if only because he doesn’t trust the cleanliness of cafeteria tables, and he laments his life. He doesn’t bother responding to Pidge—no amount of denial or reassurance is going to convince her that he doesn’t have a boyfriend and he isn’t sexting anyone. It would probably be better if he was, actually. Shiro sending him screenshots of cats he wants to adopt from the local animal shelter with eight crying face emojis is actually more embarrassing than sexting in public. So Shiro likes to send people random shit. It’s fine. It’s like a hobby.

Pidge taps the tines of her fork on the edge of her plate to get his attention. “I’m not trying to play the comic relief sidekick to your tortured anime protagonist or anything,” she says. “I don’t want to. You don’t want me to. My neighbors who wouldn’t appreciate my frustrated screaming definitely don’t want me to. I am the protagonist of my own anime over here.”

Keith senses a  _ but  _ coming.

“But if you don’t get your head out of your ass soon I’m going to have to beat you into the concrete. And I’m five foot two, so that would only be embarrassing for one of us.”

Keith stabs his chicken and mutters, “You couldn’t take me.”

A pea hits him in the cheek and he scowls, fighting the urge to mash a fistful of soggy green beans in Pidge’s hair. He can just feel the smugness radiating from her side of the table, and he’s not going to rise to the challenge today. Another pea hits his face and bounces onto Keith’s chicken.

“He  _ likes _ you, loser. I don’t know why, but he does.”

“Well, I don’t know why, either,” Keith says, finally looking at Pidge with his chin propped in hand. She raises an eyebrow at him. “I mean I get the—fine, he thinks I’m hot, so we sleep together, I get that part, but I don’t know why he—” Frustrated, Keith bites off his words and returns his attention to his food. “We barely know each other.”

“You went on that date, though—the thing you didn’t think was a date.” Pidge snickers at the face he makes; Keith overheard her the other day telling some random study partner that story, and resolved then to never tell her anything again. He’s already breaking that promise.

With time and clarity, though, Keith feels a little guilty about that night now. He can’t pinpoint what exactly he would have done instead if he had known from the start it was actually a date—not even go in the first place? Be a little less desperate and obvious about his plans to get into Shiro’s bed? Maybe—no, he wouldn’t change the sex. Even the part where he cried a little is too good to bother wishing away.

“I dunno,” Keith finally says. It’s a floundering truth, but a truth all the same.

“You need to figure out what you want from him,” Pidge says. “Because all you’re doing right now is pretending you don’t have a problem.”

“There isn’t a problem,” Keith hedges, only for Pidge to shoot him down. 

“The problem is that the two of you have different expectations about what this relationship is emotionally.” Pidge pushes her glasses up by the bridge with one finger and wipes a smear of salad dressing from the corner of her mouth in one motion. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a purely sexual relationship with him, but you need to make sure he knows that’s what’s going on.”

Keith sighs heavily. He stabs his fork at his chicken one more time just for something to do with his hand, but looking at it makes his stomach turn, so he sets the fork down and resolves to eat a big dinner later instead. “I don’t want it to be serious enough that I need to say it’s not serious,” Keith says. “He’s just so . . . nice. Too nice, it would be like kicking a puppy.”

Pidge’s face goes sympathetic instead of hard. “I don’t really know him, just through what I’ve heard from Matt, but I think he gives that impression to a lot of people.”

“He’s hot,” Keith says, throwing back the last of his glass of water. “And he’s nice. But I don’t have time to be in a relationship right now.”

***

That’s technically a lie. It leaves out the full extent of the truth, at least, which is that Keith doesn’t have the time but he wants to make the time. Shiro is easy to talk to, easier than most people, and he pushes at but doesn’t encroach on Keith’s boundaries, which is a distinction Keith never had to make before him. It’s agonizing to have all the possibilities of Shiro’s feelings and intentions laid out in front of him when Keith doesn’t know how to approach any of this in the first place. He just wanted to get laid a few times; it wasn’t that deep.

But now Shiro has his phone number and takes up a significant portion of his thoughts throughout the day, either through the sheer number of texts he sends or his appearances in Keith’s bored in-class daydreams about the last time they hooked up. He’d like to continue getting laid with someone who can get him off that well, who has this weird ability to wreck Keith in a short amount of time, and who Keith can stand to speak to afterwards. Those aren’t traits found in just anyone, especially after factoring in the biceps, abs, and the rest of the list. Thighs. Shoulders. Jawline. Shiro’s body is sculpted from something Keith isn’t convinced is mortal, and to top it all off he has soft, expressive eyes that crinkle at the corners when he smiles and when he comes.

God, that’s gay.

The part that Keith ignores is that the idea of a relationship scares him a little bit. There are a lot of unknown factors. He doesn’t want to deal with the emotional weight, and it’s not worth it for the sex or the guaranteed access to frat parties. But even he can read the weakness in that argument, so he doesn’t press it to either himself or Pidge.

By the time Keith makes it back to his dorm room and checks his phone, Shiro’s latest message is just two question marks and a sad face. He texts like a loser, and Keith absolutely doesn’t find it cute.

_ sry pidge wanted attention at lunch shes gone now _

Keith hits send and throws himself onto his bed, idly contemplating the homework sitting on his desk. His phone vibrates.

_ so that means ur alone? ;) _

_ why do u want to know _

A beat passes, then two, and Keith’s finger moves to power off his phone screen when Shiro’s response comes through, a selfie of him splayed shirtless across his bed, cut off at the small smile on his mouth. Keith hates himself for licking his lips as he stares at it.

He pauses with both thumbs poised to respond, considering. He decides:  _ don’t have anything better to do in the middle of the day? _

_ better than u? nope _

That’s a line, Keith tells himself firmly. A ridiculous line, and he doesn’t have to like it just because it’s quickly followed by another selfie angled further down so Keith can see Shiro’s fingertips sneaking below the bottom edge of the picture. 

Keith glances at the clock. It’s almost one in the afternoon, and his roommate never shows before eight. He should do his homework, but that’s just . . . not something he’s interested in right now.

He texts Shiro,  _ show me _

Tossing his phone down on the bed, Keith sits up and sheds his shirt, tossing it in the vague direction of his laundry pile. When he flops back down, he feasts his eyes on Shiro’s newest selfie—it highlights the dark trail of hair leading down Shiro’s stomach, framed by two beautifully sharp hipbones, and ends in Shiro’s dick, fully hard and half obscured by the hand wrapped around it. The accompanying message reads:  _ quid pro quo baby _

Why does Keith want to lick his fucking knuckles? What is this?

Blinded by thirst, Keith kicks off his jeans and underwear, getting a hand around himself as soon as he can, touching himself until he’s fully hard. It’s strange, if he thinks about it too hard, how desperate Shiro makes him feel—how easy it is for Keith to strip off all his clothing and send Shiro a picture of his body, cock hard and hips twisted just enough to hint at the curve of his ass. Keith doesn’t look at the picture very closely before he sends it, but it’s provocative, almost shockingly so. He looks good in it, the sharp contrast between his skin and the dark gray sheets, the rosy flush creeping down the top of his chest thanks to his growing arousal. 

_ should have planned this better _ , Shiro says. Before Keith can text back in confusion, Shiro sends another:  _ should have gotten on my bike and surprised u at ur dorm _

_ you don’t know which dorm is mine,  _ Keith says.

_ not yet ;) just wanna suck you off baby _

Keith inhales sharply, hand reaching for his dick again, and then his phone rings, Shiro’s name on the screen. Well. That’s new. His thumb hesitates over the answer button before he gives in, holding the phone to his ear and saying, “Hey.”

“God,” Shiro greets, voice unsteady. “Sorry, I couldn’t—needed to hear your voice.”

Keith pulls on his cock languidly, catching the tremor in Shiro’s voice. It’s the same way he sounds when he’s at his most desperate, when he’s close, and just the thought of that makes Keith close his eyes tightly and take a breath. To center himself, or something. He says, raspy, “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

Shiro laughs, voice strained, and that alone does things to Keith he isn’t willing to admit. “You. Obviously,” Shiro says. “I just want you to—ah. Fuck.”

“Want me to what?”

“Want you to  _ fuck me,”  _ Shiro growls, and then everything snaps into place in Keith’s mind. The little punched out breaths, the way Shiro’s voice keeps turning up at the end on a whine, the strange tension in his voice—Keith gasps and arousal shoots through him, leaving him so dizzy he has to shut his eyes.

“Holy shit,” Keith whispers. He forces his hand to slow down—he wants to draw this out now, not just some quick and dirty midday phone call for sex. Of course he’s thought about this, wants it almost too much, but as soon as he finds himself in Shiro’s presence, Keith doesn’t usually care about who’s doing what so long as they’re doing each other. He wishes the audio connection was better, wishes it were clear enough that Keith could hear every tiny change in Shiro’s bitten off whines. “Tell me everything,” he demands, unable to hold himself back. “How many fingers are you—”

“None,” Shiro gasps out. “I already stretched myself, I have a toy—oh, fuck.  _ Keith.” _

Keith can’t respond, too busy dealing with his brain melting out of his ears and the groan dropping from his lips. The visual he's created in his head takes over everything, imagining Shiro writhing on his bed and straining to fuck himself harder, mouth half open while his free hand twists in the sheets. Begging for Keith.

“Please,” Shiro pants, “please talk to me.”

“I wanna fuck you,” Keith says in a hurry. It's not the most original or inspired dirty talk ever, but it's the rawest expression of the feeling building up inside him. He wants so many things, images flashing in quick succession behind his eyelids, and he tries to relay them to Shiro, to make them into something worth getting worked up over. He imagines Shiro on his stomach before Keith, the hard muscle of his ass spread open for Keith's fingers to push inside, stretching him open, preparing him. He imagines the shocked sound that Shiro would make when Keith pushed the head of his cock inside, how his broad shoulders might tense up and his voice disappear.

Keith knows exactly how Shiro fucks, but the need to see how well he takes it rips into Keith and tears him to pieces. He’s not meant to withstand the thought of how good Shiro’s shoulders would look with his hands clenched tight in the bedspread, the long line of his back flexing and moving with Keith’s rhythm. 

Shiro makes a sound like his lips are pressed together to keep the noises inside, and Keith scrambles to ask him to stop that. “Let me hear you,” he says—begs. “Show me what you’re gonna sound like when I fuck you.”

A shuddering breath pushes its way through the receiver. “Not gonna sound like this,” Shiro pants, “not when—I can’t get the angle for—ugh.”

Keith laughs, breathless. “It’s not good enough without my dick?”

“Don’t sound so—so smug, asshole,” Shiro says, his little giggle hotter than it should be. “My wrist isn’t made for, oh, for this.”

Keith licks his lips and imagines Shiro with his legs all bunched up around him, one bicep straining to keep his hand in position. He wants to kneel in between Shiro’s legs and run his hands up and down the insides of his thighs, with almost enough pressure to qualify  as a massage, just to feel the hardness of muscle beneath skin. Shiro probably isn’t the most flexible, but Keith still wants Shiro’s ankles around his neck.

The phone call devolves quickly from there—Keith growls out something to the effect of “you’re so fucking hot and I want to put my mouth all over you,” Shiro answers with a moan edged with a growl, and it ends far quicker than probably either of them expected. Keith comes so hard he streaks his whole chest, biting out some form of Shiro’s name as he tries to keep relatively quiet, since dorm rooms aren’t exactly notorious for soundproofing. It’s the most satisfying orgasm he’s ever had in this bed.

Their spent, panting breathing echoes over the line until Shiro chuckles weakly, and static rumbles over the line. 

“I needed that,” he says, voice private and warm. “Thanks.”

“Calling me in the middle of the day for sex—were you just bored or horny?” Keith means it as an actual question, but it comes out far too teasing. Fond, almost, like his vocal cords getting away from him. It’s not what he intends.

“Uh,” Shiro says, sounding sheepish. “I get—loud. I had to wait until everyone was out of the house.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, thinks,  _ I heard that.  _

There’s silence on the line for a moment, and then Shiro asks, “So what are you up to today?”

Okay, new topic. Keith flops his hand over the side of the bed for a tissue to clean up with and comes up with an empty box instead. He sighs at it. “I need to go shopping,” he says, because he’s practically out of coffee and ramen too. “I hate carrying shit on the bus, so that means I’ll probably have to get a ride from someone around the dorm.” Which is always the worst part—first years with cars are few and far between, and usually have to be extravagantly bribed.

“Oh,” Shiro says. “I don’t like taking the bus very much either.”

Keith hums into the phone receiver, closing his eyes. He could just nap for hours now, his body completely satisfied even after such a sad, mediocre lunch.

“I could take you,” Shiro says, hesitant.

Keith’s mouth goes dry and blood rushes loud in his ears. “I—I don’t want to take up your time.”

“No!” Shiro says. He stutters out an awkward laugh. “It’s just funny, I mean, I needed to do some shopping too. I can pick you up. Is Target okay?”

This is weird. It is weird, right? Keith is second guessing all his assumptions. He’s not opposed to the idea—it saves him having to buy off a random neighbor and the trouble of awkward small talk while sitting in the car with a virtual stranger.

But still. They just had phone sex and Shiro has a sex toy he needs to clean and yet this is the conversation they’re having. This is weird.

Keith bites his lip, well aware that he’s taking too long to answer, but Shiro waits him out. The logical answer is yes. He knows that, knows it would save him a hell of a lot of time and annoyance to take Shiro up on the offer. It’s just a trip to Target; it’s not half as big of a deal as he’s making it out to be right now. And, bonus, it could be a great time to hint to Shiro that he’s not interested in a serious relationship right now—maybe if he employs enough subtlety and cunning, he can finagle this situation so he doesn’t have to say anything outright and Shiro will still understand. This probably isn’t what Pidge meant, but it’s a great compromise.

So Keith sighs, drowns in the judgement radiating from every corner of his room, and says, “What time?”

***

Keith thinks it’s a joke when he sees the car that Shiro pulls up in. It’s the ugliest thing he’s ever seen—a neon orange Jeep covered in dents, chipped paint, and clods of dirt or something, like it’s one top mounted machine gun away from becoming an extra in a Mad Max movie. Shiro waves a hand at him sitting on the steps to his dorm building as if there’s a single person on the block that missed this tragedy rolling down the street.

“I didn’t know you had a—a car,” Keith says through the rolled down window, almost scared to get too close to the monstrosity.

“And I didn’t know you looked so cute with your hair pulled back,” Shiro says cheerfully, leaning across the center console to push open the passenger door. Keith blushes hard. His eyes automatically trace over the skin bared by Shiro’s highlighter pink tank top, and despite the hideous color, it should be illegal to go sleeveless with shoulders like that. But a lot of things should be illegal when Shiro does them, so Keith needs to get over himself and be an adult.

Climbing into the car, Keith glances around and tries to school his face into something resembling acceptance. He can’t imagine that he succeeds, given that the inside looks just as wrecked as the exterior, only it’s somehow worse because there’s no reason for a car to have actual, literal dirt all over the floor and climbing onto the dashboard in the form of footprints and scuff marks. It smells sort of like weed and sort of like a chemistry lab gone wrong, neither of which Keith is particularly enamored with.

Shiro lets him stew in it.

“Your car is . . . .” Keith starts to say, but trails off because he can’t imagine what’s going to come out of his mouth next.

“It’s actually not mine,” Shiro says, finally breaking with a loud laugh. “It’s Matt’s.” Oh thank god. “Normally I take my motorcycle but I didn’t think we would be able to fit both our stuff in it.”

Keith struggles to file away that piece of information. He doesn’t know if “owns a motorcycle” should count more as an interesting fact or as an emergent sexual fantasy, but he strongly suspects by the time he falls asleep tonight it will become the latter. Tamping down hard on the image of Shiro in heavy boots instead of flip flops and a leather jacket instead of a neon tank top, Keith jerks his head in a nod and manages to wrangle his fingers into buckling his seatbelt. He’s as big a wreck as this Jeep.

Shiro is a good driver, possibly even unreasonably good—he signals at every turn and only drives a few miles over the speed limit, which makes Keith’s foot twitch with the desire to punch it, but he accepts that such a trait is, technically, positive. And it’s not awkward, surprisingly. Their hands brush once when Shiro’s hand falls to where Keith’s lays half in the cupholder, and Keith makes sure to snatch his back and keep it in his lap the rest of the drive. Everything is fine. Shiro asks how his classes are, and Keith returns the question. If it comes out a bit awkward, Shiro doesn’t let on that he notices, and soon they’re arguing over the finer points of what makes a food  _ comfort food  _ and what it means that Shiro dreamed about mac and cheese two nights ago. Keith forgets everything right up until they’re stepping out of the awful car and walking through the Target parking lot, and then Shiro’s pinkie finger brushes his and it’s all just—

Keith tries to make his weird, reflex jerk look like he meant to scratch his elbow the whole time. Of course.

_ Also _ of course, it gets about eight times worse when Shiro’s hand rises to gently brush against Keith’s lower back and guide him through the sliding glass doors. Keith’s heart starts pounding and he swallows against a suddenly too-dry throat. Immediately, he regrets every choice that led him up to this moment, but it’s a lot harder to shy away from this touch than it is an accidental brush of fingers. 

Besides. When Shiro’s hand presses more firmly on his back as they step out of the way of a dad exiting the store with four kids jumping excitedly around him, Keith finds he . . . actually doesn’t hate it. Shiro’s hand is broad and spans way too much of Keith’s back for him to think about in public, and it doesn’t push him in any direction except to nudge them together, slotting their steps into sync without crowding him. He can’t resist the way his shoulders relax into the touch, or how the arm held across his body falls back to the side. Shiro is a safe looming presence at his side with just a whisper of touch as Keith gets his hands on an abandoned shopping cart. 

The hand disappears as Keith turns toward the end of the store that has food and Shiro says, “Hey, where are you going?”

Keith stops short in confusion and finds Shiro standing next to a shelf full of three dollar Easter decorations, a quilted wall hanging shaped like a recently hatched chick in his hand. “Do you . . . need that?” he asks, uncertain.

“No,” Shiro says. “It's pretty cute though.”

Shiro seems content to peruse this odd little nook of the store that Keith walks right on past whenever he comes here, poking at pastel pinwheels and notepads with rabbits and flowers on the cover. Keith hovers at the edge of the shelf, a crease in the middle of his brow as he tries to figure out what’s going on. 

“Hey, put these on,” Shiro says, holding out a pastel blue headband with bunny ears sticking off it. Sequins line the insides of the ears.

“Um,” Keith says. “That’s not—”

“Right, not your color,” Shiro interrupts, and switches them out for the same thing in mint green. He looks so expectant and pleased that Keith can’t bring himself so say no, so he takes the headband and stares down at it in his hands, helpless. This isn’t on his list of things to buy.

Shiro takes a picture of him in bunny ears. Keith doesn’t know if he should be confused or humiliated. “I like it,” Shiro says, grinning. He tugs on a loose strand of Keith’s hair and just barely brushes his knuckles against Keith’s cheek as he does it. “We should find you a whole costume to match. Could be pretty cute.”

Cute. Keith swallows; he’s not the cute one here. He’s the one who deflects because he’s trying to let Shiro down really easily.

“You found the kink that’s going to be a dealbreaker for me,” Keith musters up, tugging the ears off his head. He hears Shiro laugh, but Keith pretends to fix his attention on the pastel crayon set next to where he sets down the bunny ears. 

“What a comedian,” Shiro says. “I think it would be great—maybe something a little Playboy bunny inspired? Nice and skimpy.”

“Oh my god,” Keith says, shaking his head. He refuses to look at Shiro.

Turning his back on Shiro turns out to be the wrong decision when two strong forearms wrap around his waist, tugging him back against Shiro's body. Shiro shoves his face in the back of Keith's neck, still laughing, and the scrape of stubble makes the hairs on Keith's neck raise up. It also makes him blush while the distinct sensation of butterflies invades his stomach. Keith can’t bring himself to push Shiro away.

It takes another five whole minutes to get past the first display of the store, and Keith only gets out of Shiro’s hold when he gets his hands back on the shopping cart, but the feeling of their bodies pressed together is seared in his mind anew. Shiro is warm, big, and strong, and Keith just got off. Literally, not even an hour ago, he got off and it was great. He doesn’t need this.

Dragging Shiro to the back of the store where food and toiletries are stocked proves difficult. Shiro demands they stop for Starbucks and refuses to let Keith pay for his own drink, even when Keith orders the huge expensive latte he never wastes money on just to convince Shiro to split the bill, and then they take a selfie holding up their drinks to reveal their names written on the side. Keith can just  _ feel _ Pidge laughing at him from another dimension.

They look good together. Keith doesn’t take a lot of selfies, but Shiro’s goofy crooked grin and Keith’s own raised eyebrows match, somehow. Shiro texts it to him so they both have a copy, and Keith resolves to bury it where no one can never find it.

God, it’s a really good picture.

By the time they make it out of Starbucks, Keith is determined to get them back on track. He has a very specific list of things he needs, and ideally they don’t need to be in the store for longer than twenty minutes, even if Shiro’s shopping list is a bit longer. Keith asks him where he needs to go first, but the question stumps Shiro.

“Oh, you know,” Shiro says, surveying the store. “Just some—oh, just some clothes. You know. For the party tomorrow.”

Keith blinks. “Is there a theme or something?”

“No, no theme,” Shiro says. His cheeks start to redden and he takes a long sip of his iced coffee. Even a venti cup looks small in his hands. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s fine.”

Keith weaves the cart in and out of haphazard clothing racks while Shiro leads the way, his left hand reaching out to brush against every shirt in his path. Plucking hangars off the rack, Shiro leads them past the empty counter in front of the changing rooms and into a spacious stall at the back, cart abandoned at the entrance. Shiro tugs Keith inside with him, a grin on his face.

That’s the look he gets when he knows he’s about to get what he wants.

“Hi,” Shiro breathes against his mouth. Keith finds himself pressed against the changing room door, and he wants to punch himself. He shouldn’t let this happen. 

Their lips brush. It’s already happening.

“Hey,” Keith replies, too late to be reasonable.

“I just wanna kiss you,” Shiro whispers. 

“We all want things.”

Shiro chokes out a laugh, stifled in a kiss to Keith’s cheek that makes him dizzy. Keith turns his face in just enough to get a whiff of Shiro’s scent—he smells like warm skin and that awful fruity body wash, and it sparks something surprisingly strong in Keith’s chest.

Shiro kisses him for real this time, slow, like he’s got all the time in the world and he intends to make it worth his while. His lips are soft, mouth warm, hands gentle on Keith’s waist. Keith wraps his arms around Shiro’s neck because this is officially out of his control; he can’t remember the last time someone kissed him this thoroughly, like it’s the only thing they’ve ever thought about, and he wants it. It’s like a key turning in the lock, a sharp click and a lurch that wipes Keith’s mind of coherent thought.

“You’re so beautiful,” Shiro murmurs into Keith’s jaw, so quiet it’s almost impossible to hear. 

And that undoes everything.

Keith needs to be honest with Shiro about what they’re doing here; he’s down with making out or getting off or whatever in a department store changing room, but whispered confessions in the same situation make his fingers feel numb and his heart race. It’s impossible to keep his head on straight when his arms are locked around Shiro’s neck and he can feel that Shiro hasn’t shaved in a few days. It’s hard because Shiro is warm all over and he has one thumb under the hem of Keith’s shirt, stroking the skin just to the side of his belly button, a touch that couldn’t possibly be categorized as sexual. 

It’s not too late. Shiro hasn’t told Keith that his feelings are romantic—he could very well just be a very touchy, sweet, gentle person around the guy he’s sleeping with. Someone who calls hookups dates because it seems more polite. Even if Keith’s instincts are screaming at him that he can’t possibly be that dense, to willfully misinterpret what seems so clear, well. Keith has been wrong before, right?

“Shiro,” he says, tongue like lead in his mouth. He unwinds his arms and slides them down so his hands rest on Shiro’s collar bone. They stare each other in the eyes.

“I have a confession to make,” Shiro says, abrupt. “I sort of—lied to you.”

Great, just as he gathered the courage to spit out the words. Keith tries not to let panic show on his face, and he pushes back on Shiro’s chest so he can put a few extra inches of space between them. “What do you mean?”

“Not like, in a bad way,” Shiro says, even though his face is set in a way that looks guilty, like he’s done something really wrong. “Just—when I asked you about your major? And said I hadn’t seen you around before? That was—I mean, I knew who you were.”

Silently, Keith tries to figure out how nervous he should be, on the scale of one to he’s being stalked around campus by a six foot three guy who wears neon clothing half the time. His eyes dart back and forth between Shiro’s, not sure where to look, and it’s this silence that finally makes Shiro break his gaze, eyes dropping so his eyelashes sweep the tops of his cheeks. 

“Explain,” Keith says.

“Matt was—he was really nervous about Pidge coming here,” Shiro says in a rush. “And I promised I would help him keep an eye on her because I was the TA for her gen ed composition class last semester. She was bullied a lot in high school, you know, so—”

“I wasn’t in that class, though,” Keith says, confused.

“Yeah, but you were in the classroom down the hall at the same time,” Shiro says. Right. “You guys always walked to class together and I just—I couldn’t help but notice you. And getting to know you has just been amazing, Keith, I couldn’t believe I got this chance when I ran into you at that party.”

God, Keith needs to put an end to this.

“Look, Shiro,” he says, the words awkward in his mouth.

“I promise it’s not weird,” Shiro says, his grip on Keith flexing. “I only knew what Pidge had told Matt about you, and you sounded really great and I knew you were hot and I panicked and lied on our date because I didn’t want you to think I was following you or something. I didn't want to come on too strong but I don't think I'm very good at that.” Shiro laughs a little, self deprecating. 

Keith takes a deep breath to steady himself. “Why are you telling me this?”

Shiro gives him a crooked smile, but the look in his eyes is nervous. Keith can’t imagine he’s emoting anything positive right now. “I really like you, Keith,” he says. “It’s been bothering me that I didn’t tell you. I don’t want to ruin this before it even starts because I wasn’t completely honest with you.”

Holy fuck. This is happening.

So Keith does some panicking of his own. He gets one hand around the back of Shiro’s neck and demands, “Kiss me.”

***

Keith gets back to his dorm three hours later than expected after narrowly avoiding giving Shiro a handjob in Target just to stop him from talking about his feelings. This isn't going to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please check out the INCREDIBLE fanart made for this target run, it literally keeps me going:
> 
> [shiro in a neon pink tank top by softwolffeathers](https://softwolffeathers.tumblr.com/post/177117202983/more-fanart-for-another-fantastic-fic-that-im)   
>  [keith wearing bunny ears by monstersinthecosmos](https://monstersinthecosmos.tumblr.com/post/178274210234/i-am-crazy-enjoying-disloyalpunks-college-au)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's incredible how slowly time passes when you move & don't have internet for 2 weeks but i am finally revived!! anyway i've missed this fic so much, thank you so much for sticking with me through that weird transition!
> 
> [fic playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/user/tmwec387u6xznz1uqwvbnb0ic/playlist/6LdydV20uvrJnSwUC5TXOX?si=X7_cBxNbThCUc4ze432xQQ)

Thursday night, Pidge says, “I hate you so much. Remember when you used to be fun? Fall semester? Good times.” She slams a shot glass down on her desk, right beside Keith slumped over it with his head in his hands, rocking back and forth a little in the horrendously uncomfortable dorm chair. Tequila slops over the side and she throws a lime wedge at his head. It gets stuck in his hair.

“I have to text him,” Keith says without moving. “I have to tell him I’m not go—“

“Shut up,” Pidge says. She throws a pen at him next and it bounces to the floor. “I literally don’t care about your drama anymore.”

Keith groans. He sits up just enough to take the shot, fetching the lime from his hair, and when the glass hits the desk again, Pidge refills him. “C’mon,” she says, nudging it toward him with a knuckle. “If you drink enough, you’ll stop being stupid and I can go get laid.”

“You’ve definitely been nicer to me.”

“Right,” Pidge says, voice drier than sun-bleached pavement. “Because your life is so tragic since you found out the boy you like likes you back. Take the shot, Kogane.”

He obeys, if only because he came here to pregame and he’s not going to wimp out after just one shot, even though the taste of the cheapest tequila Pidge could bribe a senior into buying for her makes his throat want to close up in disgust. Keith coughs through it.

Pidge crunches on a potato chip and flips through something on her phone, white screen reflected in her glasses. She looks so utterly content with the world that Keith is immediately jealous—he didn’t ask for any of this emotional turmoil when he decided to sleep with Shiro the first time, second time, or any of the rest. Even the  _ thing  _ that almost happened in Target that he doesn’t want to talk about ever again was supposed to be a distraction from emotions, not an instigating factor for more of them.

The image of Shiro’s wide eyes when a Target employee knocked awkwardly on the door just as Keith’s hand started to slide below his waistband is second in Keith’s mind only to his nervous, happy giggle once they were left alone again.

He can hardly admit it, but Shiro is  _ incredibly _ cute. Maybe it’s the floppy hair.

“Guess we’ll have to pick this up tomorrow, huh?” Shiro had whispered, tucking his forehead into the side of Keith’s neck. His hair tickled, his hands stroked carefully up and down Keith’s sides under his shirt, and his breath brushing against Keith’s skin coincided with an unfortunate thump of Keith’s heart.

“Guess so,” Keith breathes. He closes his eyes against the ceiling’s judgement.

Shiro didn’t stop laughing to himself and looking at Keith with pleased, secretive grins the whole time spent wandering around Target, not until he dropped Keith back off with plastic bags in hand. So cute. Whether or not he actually bought or tried on anything clothing remains a mystery. Keith wishes the rest of the shopping trip wasn’t quite so hazy in his memory, but Shiro dropping emotional bombs seems to have that sort of effect on him. It’s an unfortunate circumstance.

What Keith hates about the whole thing is, surprisingly, not the fact that he can’t ignore Shiro’s feelings anymore—there’s no way to misinterpret the words “I really like you” or that Shiro thinks there’s the potential for something between them, something more. Maybe Keith has been willfully dense so far, but there’s only so much he can do to remain firmly in denial under these circumstances. No, instead, now Keith needs to do some sort of damage control. He needs to get his life back in order.

“He likes me, Pidge,” Keith says. His finger traces out a wet circle of spilled tequila on her desk.

“You are the  _ last _ person to figure that out.”

Keith groans and drops his forehead to the desk. “If I go to this party I’m just gonna sleep with him again.”

“Bummer.”

He ignores Pidge’s tone. “I can’t lead him on like that,” Keith says, but his heart just . . . isn’t in it. “Pidge, we’ve had sex like, like five times, and he thinks we’re basically dating. I can’t break up with him when we’re not even together!”

Pidge sighs deeply. “Remember how I invited you to Shabbat tomorrow? This is me taking that back. We’re not friends anymore.”

“You were the one who told me to go sleep with him in the first place,” Keith grumbles, but when she ignores him, he takes it with grace.

He gets it. This is Keith’s own problem to deal with, his own emotional turmoil. It’s arguably all his fault for leaving Shiro his phone number in the first place, but he did that hoping for nothing more than a second hook up with the hottest person he’s ever slept with. Some sexting, maybe. Not weird dinner dates, Target trips, and way too many cat pictures with cutesy comments.

It doesn’t take Pidge more than thirty seconds to break down and insert herself into Keith’s life again. Thank god for her.

“Okay,” Pidge says, nudging her glasses back into place. “This is the absolute last serious thing I’m going to say about your crap, so listen up. He likes you, romantically. You like him, undefined. You both like sleeping together. Is it really a bad thing if you just  _ tell him _ you want to keep doing what you’re doing and take things slowly? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. Do a trial run, and if it turns out that neither of you are getting what you need out of it, well.” Pidge shrugs.

Keith accepts the gravity of the words she prefaced the question with and considers it. It doesn’t take him a lot of time to admit that she’s right. It’s not as if Shiro is asking him to choose between a June wedding or never seeing each other again; he’s an open-minded kind of guy who’s confessed some romantic feelings but hasn’t demanded anything of Keith. 

It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t have to be the big, scary thing Keith has built up in his mind.

“Do you think he would agree with that?” Keith asks.

“Nope, sorry, you’ve used up the last of my empathy. Drink up, my dude, we have a party to attend.”

***

Keith walks into the party feeling like less than hot shit, tipsy off the tequila Pidge managed to cram down his throat and way too anxious about what he’s going to say to Shiro when they manage to be in the same room together. This time, Pidge doesn’t have to bully the door guy to let him in as her brother’s guest—instead, Keith gets an assessing look and a scoff from a short, pointy freshman who recognizes him as ‘the guy Shiro’s been hanging out with.’ Keith isn’t sure where  _ that _ language came from, but he ignores the smug stare and the comment that he’d better get on in there before Shiro gets sad he didn’t show.

Whatever.

“Alright, bye,” Pidge says as soon as they're in the door, but Keith grabs her arm to stop her.

“Where are you going?” Keith says, shouting to make himself heard over the booming music and all the people in the house. The volume shocks him every time he goes to a party.

Pidge rolls her eyes. “You think I'm going to stick around watching you make eyes at Shiro? Fuck no. I'm getting laid tonight, and that’s not gonna happen within a ten-foot radius of you being a loser. Bye.”

Keith curses under his breath as she slips off. He loves Pidge, he really does, but her tolerance for anything she considers ridiculous is low on a good day, and his boy problems have definitely overstayed their welcome in her life. 

He sighs, glancing around the dim lit room—he  _ has _ been annoying lately, he knows that. So far, Keith’s ignored every piece of advice and warning from Pidge, and that’s not very good friend behavior when he knows she has nothing but his best interests in mind. Pidge isn’t the kind of person who would lie to make him feel better, and just because she knows Shiro vaguely through her brother doesn’t mean she’s any more of an expert on him than Keith is. 

Keith resolves to be a better friend in the future, starting tonight by leaving her to her hunt.

That leaves Keith on his own to fix his problems, though, which he isn’t totally in love with either. He still can’t figure out what he’s going to even  _ say  _ to Shiro when they see each other—something friendly but not overly flirty, not rude, polite, nothing that’s going to lead to them falling into bed together, at least until Keith manages to have a real talk with him and say that he doesn’t want a relationship but he likes where they’re at. Keith can’t let Shiro distract him before he spits it all out, or else that means he’s going to lose another night to the hypnosis induced by the sight of Shiro’s naked body. Keep it casual, keep it real. Keith can do that.

Game plan set.

***

Shiro gets the drop on him by appearing out of nowhere during Keith’s journey to the kitchen for alcohol, gathering Keith up into his arms to slide a hand into the back pocket of his jeans and kiss him hard and sloppy. His eyes are glassy when he pulls away with a laugh, purple snapback askew from the proximity of Keith’s face. He’s drunk.

“Be my partner,” Shiro says before anything else, hands squeezing Keith’s waist and ass. It’s way too much touching for the number of people they’re surrounded by, but Keith sinks into it, helpless. God, he really shouldn’t have had so much tequila before coming here, because his head is already spinning and Shiro’s towering height makes Keith feel unsteady on his feet. Shiro’s body is a walking sexual identity crisis, and it’s  _ all _ up against him. Keith thinks about groping Shiro’s chest and finds that his hand is already doing the work for him, sketching out the lines of hard muscle that enraptured Keith from the start and taunting Keith with what he can’t yet have.

“Be what?” Keith asks, distracted. The thin white cotton of Shiro’s shirt hangs off his shoulders, the sides cut out to bare skin all the way down to the waist of his stupidly tight jeans. Keith is crazy about Shiro’s apparent hatred for clothing with sleeves, but thank god it’s not neon today.

“My  _ partner _ ,” Shiro says, snagging Keith’s wandering hand in his own. Big hands. Big heart. Big—

“Oh shit,” Keith says, his eyes going wide. No, nope, this cannot be happening—Keith has  _ just _ managed to talk himself into gently but firmly telling Shiro he’s flattered but doesn’t want a relationship and now Shiro is talking about partners and commitment and this isn’t going to work at all unless they—

“I told a freshman I would kick his ass,” Shiro continues, totally oblivious to Keith’s panic. The caveman part of Keith’s brain is upset by this sentence—he’s talking about someone else’s ass while fucking  _ massaging  _ Keith’s, what in the world is this? But obviously the two aren’t connected, and it’s also not connected that Keith doesn’t feel the bite of relief at Shiro’s words. Clearly, they’re thinking about different things. “I hope you’re good at beer pong.”

What.

“But I’m a freshman too,” Keith says weakly. Shiro just laughs and mashes his mouth into the side of Keith’s head while he does it. He’s a handsy, touchy drunk, no surprise there.

“A rival freshman,” Shiro says, and then they’re off.

Shiro pulls him down the cramped basement stairs after a second kiss that steals Keith’s breath and triples the haze in his mind. The stairs, lined with people drinking and screaming at each other to be heard over the music, are dark and apparently endless; Keith has to brush against far too many people on his way down. It gets quieter as they go, until only the deep bass of the music reverberates through the floors and the rest of the noise comes from a group of people crowded around two long tables. 

Ever gracious, Shiro snags them a couple of solo cups and fills them from the keg sitting in the corner, and Keith resists the urge to wrinkle his nose at it. He might consistently drink the cheapest liquor in existence, but cheap beer is an affront to his humanity.

Shiro makes introductions as they approach the table and integrate themselves into the crowd. Keith has to watch Shiro give out those weird little bro hugs at every turn before he turns to Keith and says a name Keith promptly forgets to save his own skin. These are all Shiro’s brothers, mixed in with a couple of their partners and some friends of the frat—Keith qualifies in that category now, he imagines.

“And this,” Shiro says, clamping his hand down on another guy’s shoulder and winking at Keith, “is our challenger. Keith, meet—”

_ “You.” _

Keith blinks in surprise at the venom coming out of his mouth. The first thing Keith notices about him is that he has a lot of cowlicks for as short as his hair is, reminding Keith of the reason he keeps his own grown out, and the second is that he’s  _ very _ mad.

“Come on, Shiro, are you doing this just to torture me? I thought we were friends, buddy, like Shiro-and-Lance buddies, know what I mean?”  _ Whiny,  _ Keith scoffs in his head. “And they said hazing ended after initiation! I swear I’m gonna—”

“What?” Shiro asks, and Keith gets distracted by the little line of confusion between his eyes. “Do you guys know each other?”

Keith’s answer  _ no _ is lost underneath the explosion of disdain. “Know each other? We’re rivals! And if I had known he was the one you’d be playing with, I would’ve doubled the stakes. Tripled them!” Shiro squints at Lance as if studying him, and then he tosses Keith an uncertain glance.

Keith isn’t so drunk as to completely lose sight of the world around him, so he’s pretty certain he doesn’t know this guy. “Uh, who are you?” he asks, trying his best to be polite.

“Ha ha, very funny,” the Lance says, scowling. He crosses his arms and gives Keith an unimpressed look. “We were in the same orientation group? Opposing team captains in capture the flag? We’re  _ rivals?” _

“Uh,” Keith says. He vaguely remembers a game of capture the flag, and even hazier is the memory of their orientation leader making him team captain in order to encourage him to spread his wings or something and interact more with the other students. But Lance is a total blank spot.

Lance gapes at him. “Are you kidding me?” he says, arms exploding into a pinwheel around his body. “We—we’re in calculus together!”

“Well, I don’t even know anyone in that class,” Keith says, impatient. “Sorry I don’t remember you, okay, but I think this is the first time we’ve actually talked. And we’re not rivals.”

Shiro’s awkward laugh cuts through the oncoming tirade that Lance is clearly working up, his hand on the small of Keith’s back pressing harder. “Are we playing or what?” he asks, gesturing with the hand that holds his beer, sloshing around in its cup. Keith takes a drink as if on instinct and regrets it immediately. “Who’s your partner, Lance?”

Lance puffs up and then deflates like a baby bird. He opens his mouth to say something to Keith, but then snaps it shut and narrows his eyes. Can he make up his mind about anything? “I know what you’re trying to do,” he says, quiet enough that the words are barely audible. “Trying to throw me off my game! But!” He starts yelling again. “Me and my  _ man _ , the light of my life, the peanut butter to my jelly, the Rachel to my Monica—we’re gonna kick your  _ ass _ , and you’ll never forget us! Hey, Hunk!”

Launching himself through the crowd to grab the sleeve of another tall guy in a mustard yellow shirt, Lance leaves Keith feeling like he’s just survived a tornado. 

“Huh,” Shiro says, taking another sip of his beer as his eyes follow Lance. “That was weird. He’s usually cool.”

That's not the impression Keith got at all.

“Anyway, Hunk’s cool too—they knew each other in high school and pledged together. Pretty sweet, huh?”

Keith looks up into Shiro’s smiling face and says, “I hope you're not planning on winning, because I've never played beer pong before.”

“But,” Shiro says emphatically, “you have great hand-eye coordination. I would know.”

Despite himself, a blush rises to Keith's face and he ducks his head to hide it. Shiro chuckles, deep in his chest where Keith can feel its vibrations with the way his body is tucked into Shiro's. “Well,” he says, tongue awkward in his mouth. Something about Shiro is throwing him off tonight—the easy hands, maybe, or the fact that when Shiro turns just so, his shirt pulls with him and reveals the hard lines of his pecs and his flat, brown nipples, and Keith isn’t supposed to want him tonight. Tonight is for laying down the law.

“Well,” Keith repeats, steadier after reminding himself of his goals. Don’t get distracted by Shiro’s body. “Are you sure you wanna enlist a freshman with no experience to help you beat another freshman?”

Shiro’s grin melts something inside Keith. “I can’t think of anyone else better to have by my side.”

***

After beer pong, Keith can no longer say he isn’t drunk or that he doesn’t have a rival named Lance.

“But  _ only _ in beer pong,” he says to Lance before they part ways, stabbing him in the chest with one finger. Keith and Shiro won, of course, as if there was ever any doubt about Shiro’s ability to pick up the slack and make them champions, but even though Lance is also terrible at the game, he’s still marginally better than Keith. Keith doesn’t know anything about calculus or capture the flag, but Lance is definitely his beer pong rival. 

“Hey, Shiro,” he says at the base of the stairs. “Is there anyone else in this frat who’s secretly obsessed with me?” Keith can’t take any more of these surprises.

Shiro just snorts. “Obsessed? Not as far as I know,” he says into the shell of Keith’s ear. The party isn’t so loud down here that he needs to be quite that close, but Keith is  _ drunk _ . They both are. He doesn’t need a better reason. “I do know you promised me a dance.”

“I didn’t. I can’t dance,” Keith says immediately.

Shiro laughs. “I bet you can,” he says. “Bet you look good doing it.”

Keith doesn’t know the first thing about dancing, but he knows about that look in Shiro’s eye, and it’s never given him something he didn’t want.

So Keith dances in the middle of a sweltering pit of bodies crammed inside the main room, acting like the creaky floors are a real dance floor. He’s awkward and stilted at first, but it’s not as if Shiro is that great at it either, it turns out, and when another drink winds its way into Keith’s hand, he throws it back and tosses himself into dancing. It’s the most fun he’s had in—in a while. It’s not sexy dancing, or whatever, not like the various couples surrounding them that Keith sees grinding all over each other out of the corner of his eye. It’s fun and ridiculous and involves a  _ lot _ of Shiro tripping over his own feet and making it look fun. Shiro grabs both of Keith’s hands in his and whirls him around, tries to get Keith to do the same for himself but his arm isn’t long enough to reach over Shiro’s head without them both falling over out of drunkeness. Shiro stumbles and turns it into another dance.

“That’s terrible!” Keith shouts, laughing even as the crowd swallows up his voice. Shiro throws him a wink as he continues to throw elbows and knees in some weird dance approximation of running, too jerky to be on the beat.

Shiro mouths something at him. Shaking his head, Keith laughs some more and he pushes his sweaty bangs off his face, the heat of the dancefloor exhausting him in the most exhilarating way. Shiro blows him a kiss and takes his hands again, spinning them around in a circle so offbeat that Keith can’t fathom this is dancing anymore. The closeness, the warmth, the familiarity—it sings in Keith’s gut, mixing with the alcohol and turning him into someone sappy and ridiculous. He wants to kiss the toothy grin off Shiro’s face, wants to snatch his stupid hat away and bury his fingers into Shiro’s hair. 

Tequila turns it into the best idea he’s ever had.

Keith grabs Shiro’s face between his hands and drags him down. Shiro laughs into the kiss—he won’t stop  _ laughing,  _ it’s so distracting—and wraps his hands arms around Keith enthusiastically. The deep beat of the music pulses through Keith and the crowd fills in the space around them quickly, but all he can focus on is the scratch of Shiro’s stubble against his palms and the thrill he gets from Shiro’s touch.

He can’t stop. Or maybe he doesn’t want to. But he kind of . . . is unable to detach himself from Shiro’s mouth, and the crowd shuffles them to the back wall while Keith isn’t paying attention.

The last reasonable thought Keith has is that he can’t sleep with Shiro in a crowded room, so he hasn’t broken his promise to himself. They can make out, then talk,  _ then _ sleep together, which is the ideal chain of events, and before the serious stuff happens, Keith has plenty of time to climb Shiro like a tree.

Dancing is whatever, but Keith can’t help but be attracted to Shiro’s easy confidence and the joy he takes in being clumsy and happy, even with all eyes on him. Sexual attraction is ridiculous, a completely untamable beast, and Keith can’t change the fact that his body sees some loser with huge thighs and biceps doing the running man and decides he needs to jump him immediately. Totally out of Keith’s control.

But fuck, does he love kissing Shiro. Keith has daydreams about Shiro’s lips, how full and soft they are and how good they are at taking Keith to pieces. How kissing them usually means his body pressed against Shiro’s, their limbs tangled up together, and new, perfect bruises down Keith’s neck the next morning.

He slips one hand inside the back of Shiro’s loose shirt to find something to hold onto, even as sweat-slick skin evades his grasp. His nails scrape against skin and Shiro’s hips shove Keith even tighter against the wall, using sheer strength to hold Keith on his tiptoes against the wall. 

Keith gives into the urge to wrap a leg around Shiro’s waist, and before he knows it, Shiro is hauling him the rest of the way up so Keith can lock his ankles together behind Shiro’s back. Their mouths lose contact but Keith finds his way to the long, beautiful column of Shiro’s neck. He tastes the salt on his skin and nips at the skin above his Adam’s apple, thrilling at the texture and the feeling of Shiro’s moan vibrating through the thin skin of his throat. 

Then an elbow hits Keith in the side,  _ hard.  _ He yelps, barely missing Shiro’s bottom lip with his teeth as he jerks away from whoever just decided to give Keith one hell of a not-at-all-sexy bruise. Shiro’s concerned gaze follows his own to the annoyed looking guy standing next to them, arms crossed and an eyebrow raised at Shiro. He looks strangely familiar—looks exactly like Pidge, actually. It takes Keith a moment to realize that this is Pidge’s brother and Shiro’s closest, Matt, who he’s only met in passing once or twice. With a showy nod at the door and an eye roll, Matt disappears back into the crowd.

It’s hard to tell in the light, but Shiro might be blushing as he leads Keith by the hand out of the room, through the crowded halls, and out onto the back deck. Keith has fond memories of this deck.

“Sorry about that,” Shiro says, sheepish. “We technically have rules about couples getting too heavy on the dancefloor.”

Keith just laughs in response, skin prickling at the unseasonably cool air surrounding him. It feels good after the boiling dancefloor, cooling the flush of alcohol in his veins and slowing everything back down to a more manageable level of desire for Shiro. He leans against the wooden railing with both hands braced as he stares out across the yard, emptier than when he had first met Shiro.

“You guys have a lot of rules about where you’re not supposed to screw around,” he says finally glancing back at Shiro.

Snorting, Shiro joins him at the railing, their arms brushing. “It’s a frat house. If we didn’t have rules, it would be a biohazard.”

“Mmm, sexy.”

Keith can’t think of anything to say next, and an awkward air settles over them. The screen door screeches on its hinges and slams shut as the remaining people lingering out back disappear back into the house. In the near silence, Shiro slumps against him, and Keith turns alcohol bleary eyes to watch Shiro put his hand over Keith’s on the railing, his fingers sliding into the spaces between Keith’s with an ease that shocks him to the core. His face flames up suddenly; it’s too intimate to watch the sweep of Shiro’s thumb across the outside of Keith’s small finger. 

He clears his throat. “Um. Shiro.”

“Yeah?” Shiro asks.

“I . . . .” But Keith is at a loss. He told himself so many times that he has to suck it up and talk to Shiro like an adult, but he never planned out the words to say. He doesn’t know  _ what _ to say. He doesn’t want to hurt Shiro, who doesn’t deserve that, but he has to say something.

He lets the silence linger for too long, and Shiro takes the reins. “I’m really glad you came tonight,” he says, falling deeper against Keith until he can’t ignore Shiro’s warmth. “I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun at one of these parties.”

Keith exhales, trying his best to make it come out as anything other than a sigh. God, he can’t do this. “I’m having fun too,” he admits. “But you know what would make it more fun?”

Shiro leans around to look at him, his grin mischievous. “What would?”

_ “Shots.” _

***

Worst idea of his life.

The two of them doing tequila shots in the kitchen turns into eight people doing tequila shots which turns into someone shouting  _ body shots! _ loud enough for even more people to join and suddenly—

Shiro strips off his tank top, hat flying to the ground with it, and it’s not like the shirt was covering all that much skin to begin with, but Keith’s mouth still goes dry at the sight. Low light is especially good to him.

“You wanna?” says Shiro, loose and easy. He holds out a neon green plastic shot glass to Keith and raises an eyebrow in a challenge. What Keith  _ wants  _ is to drop straight to his knees and worship Shiro’s body like it deserves, and the desire to gag himself into silence on Shiro’s dick hits him like a freight train. 

Keith takes the shot glass instead, and instantly someone is there to fill it to the brim with tequila, liquid dripping onto his fingers. Shiro’s got a lime in one hand, a bowl of salt in the other, and a smirk like he knows exactly how good he looks right now and how much Keith wants to say fuck it all and drag him anywhere away from prying eyes. The fucking pantry would work right now.

Keith’s throat clicks as he swallows heavily. This is an inopportune time to start getting hard in his jeans.

Leaving the salt behind him on the counter, Shiro guides Keith in to his neck with a hand fisted tight in his hair, and Keith licks a wide stripe up the side obediently, tasting sweat and skin over the sudden numbness in his mouth. Grinning from behind the lime caught by his teeth, Shiro sort of slaps the salt onto his skin with one clumsy hand. Keith starts to get an idea.

“Get up on the counter,” he says, advancing until he has Shiro caged in, interest growing in his features.

Shiro hops up, easy, his legs sliding apart for Keith to step right up against the counter, sliding his hands up the corded muscles of Shiro’s thighs. It’s the exact reversal of their first meeting, except this time there’s an openness in Shiro’s body language, and Keith is weak in the knees from realizing it’s only for him. He aches for them to be alone right now—he doesn’t care for the spectacle of the whole thing, but he likes Shiro tucked into this corner, hemmed in by Keith’s body, whose back is to their potential audience. 

Keith wants Shiro naked under his hands.

He takes the shot with another long lick up Shiro’s neck, collecting coarse salt on his tongue. Sober, Keith wouldn’t find this hot at all, but there’s something about knowing that underneath the salt sits the taste of Shiro, going down with the shot and then the bite of the lime. The look in Shiro’s eyes is wild, and Keith drops his shot glass to the counter and does what he wishes Shiro had done the first time they met, just as hungry now as then.

Crushing their mouths together, Keith grips Shiro tightly by the waist, fingers digging into his skin and hard muscle, guiding him forward so they can press their chests together. Shiro kisses him back with a sloppy lack of grace, his grip tight on Keith’s ass as if he’s been glued there. Keith doesn’t mind at all.

Shiro breaks it with a wild gasp. “Do another,” he says into Keith’s ear, and he threads a hand through Keith’s hair and drags him down to Shiro’s belly button. Unbidden, a moan falls from Keith’s lips as he licks up the beautifully deep line between Shiro’s abs, watching Shiro sprinkle salt there before he pushes Keith back down. Keith wishes again, as Shiro hands him a full shot glass from god knows where, that he had the guts to shove Shiro bodily into the pantry a few feet to their right and drop to his knees right there. The particular desperation turns over in his belly violently, and his teeth rip through the lime and then latch onto Shiro’s jaw, marking him with a bruise that Keith is  _ proud _ to put there. 

_ God, I want you so bad,  _ Keith thinks. He can hardly remember the reason that’s a bad thing.

Keith loses his shirt next at Shiro’s insistence so he can mouth his way across the sharpest part of Keith’s collarbone and do a shot of his own. The line of his throat as he swallows and the flash of white teeth as he sneaks the lime from Keith’s mouth hurt to look at.

They kiss again, over and over, until Shiro breaks the chain with a laugh. “Would you believe I’ve never done this before?”

“Body shots?” Keith slurs. That’s definitely a slur. “Me neither.”

“Bet they taste better on you than anyone else in the world,” Shiro says happily. His eyes, glazed, droop closed as he mashes his forehead into the side of Keith’s neck and pulls him ever closer to the counter and Shiro’s body on top of it. Shiro sighs, his hot breath hitting Keith’s bare shoulder. “Y’make me wanna do things I’ve never—never wanted to try before.”

Keith giggles. “Like what?”

Shiro finally drags his head back up to look at Keith. He has beautiful eyes. “My grandpa would be so disappointed if he knew I was letting pretty boys do body shots off me.”

“Just  _ one _ boy,” Keith retorts, pressing a hard kiss to Shiro’s lips. “But I don’t wanna, um, ruin that nice Christian boy vibe. It’s—y’know.” Keith pats Shiro on the chest with a loud thump. He only does it once because he figures some subtle groping is a much better use of his time.

“Actually,” Shiro says, picking Keith’s hand off him and tangling their fingers together, “I’m Buddhist.” He squints at their joined hands and twists them around to see from a different angle.

“No, you’re not.”

Shiro laughs and nudges their foreheads together, the lock of white hair poking out of his backwards hat trying to stick to Keith’s sweaty skin. “I am.”

Keith goes a little cross-eyed trying to stay focused on Shiro’s face, but between the proximity and the alcohol, it’s too difficult to do. “I saw you looking at—at Easter decorations,” Keith says finally, his drunk brain momentarily confused by the words coming out of his own mouth before understanding kicks in. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Shiro repeats, absent minded as he presses a kiss to Keith’s knuckles. “Kiss me some more.”

Keith loses track of how much time they spend making out at the kitchen counter. He guesses either this is an acceptable level of intimacy to be had in the kitchen during a party, or everyone is too drunk to care about the couple tucked in the deepest corner of the room. He doesn’t pull back until his mouth is dry and Shiro’s lips are swollen bright red, a blooming red mark on the other side of his jaw to match the one from earlier. The fact that it’s already that dark means it’s going to be brutal in the morning.

“Should drink some water,” Shiro says as they catch their breath against each other.

The last thing Keith wants in the world is water, not when he’s achingly hard and he can feel against his lower stomach that Shiro is in the same state, but he acquiesces when Shiro nudges him with a knee.

“So responsible,” Keith says, half to himself once they’ve had a glass of water each. It triggers something in his mind, reminds him that tonight he’s supposed to be the responsible one. He has something very important to tell Shiro.

Keith drags Shiro outside again, claiming a need for fresh air and a few more walls between his ears and the endless thumping of the speakers in the main room. He lets Shiro join him at the railing again, only this time Shiro plants one hand on either side of Keith’s body and cages him in a warm, comforting hold. Keith sinks back against him, grateful in what’s now what he would officially consider to qualify as cold weather. He tells Shiro this, that in Arizona this sort of temperature would be hardly tolerable.

“You just want me to stand here and keep you warm,” Shiro says.

“Not true.” Maybe it’s a little true. “Hey. Shiro.”

Shiro nods his head against the back of Keith’s neck. This is it—Keith is going to speak his mind, tell Shiro the truth, and it’s all going to work out fine. Thank you, tequila, for this opportunity.

“I—I really like what we’ve been doing,” Keith says. Starting with the truth. “And I don’t want to, um, mess with it. Because if it’s—well, you shouldn’t fix what’s not broken. Right?”

“Uh,” Shiro says, sounding far too amused. Keith squirms. “Right. I like this too, you know.”

Keith’s fingers are clenched on the railing so tightly they’re starting to hurt. “So we can just—keep going like we are? No pressure? Nothing changes?”

“Of course, Keith,” Shiro says. “I’ve been having a lot of fun with you, you know. More than I’ve had with anyone in a while. I don’t want to change that.” His voice gets smaller as the confession goes on, but Keith brightens at it.

“Me too,” he says, and he means it with every fiber of his being. Shiro, even with all his messy feelings that Keith doesn’t like to meditate on for too long, can still be easy and uncomplicated. To think that Keith built this conversation up in his mind to be some big scary thing—so what if Shiro likes him? So what if Keith doesn’t understand himself enough to name how he feels about Shiro? They’re having fun; no one is getting hurt. Just because Shiro likes him doesn’t mean they’re  _ dating.  _ “I don’t want anything else. Just this.”

“Yeah?” Shiro says, voice hopeful. “I don’t want you to think that just because I told you—”

“No,” Keith says in a rush, turning around in Shiro’s arms so he can look happily into Shiro’s eyes without the stupid cloud of feelings hanging over his head for the first time in ages. “I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

Shiro pecks him on the lips over and over until Keith growls and grabs Shiro’s head again to hold him in place and kiss him like he means business. He sucks on Shiro’s tongue until Shiro takes the lead from him, tipping Keith’s head further back and controlling the kiss with nothing but a slightly straightened spine and a firm grip on Keith’s jaw.

Keith lets Shiro carry him to his bedroom, legs and arms wrapped around Shiro like a spider monkey, uncaring of who’s watching their stumbling exit from the party and up the stairs.

This is exactly what Keith said he wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buckle up for the ride
> 
> [tumblr](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i owe @[eternal-heatstroke](http://eternal-heatstroke.tumblr.com) my life for this chapter

The air in the room shifts as they close Shiro’s bedroom door behind them. Being on the second floor and tucking themselves into the back of the house, the sound of the party is muffled now, ever present but not overpowering. Keith holds Shiro’s face in his hands while Shiro presses him against the wall next to his bedroom door, Keith’s legs still locked around his waist. He can hardly believe Shiro carried him up the stairs while  _ drunk,  _ but Keith has seen the amount of weight he lifts at the gym. The hardest part of this for Shiro is probably avoiding all the other drunken people.

“Hi,” Shiro says, his breathing heavy but his smile pleased. He lights Keith up from the inside, a fire that starts in the deepest part of his belly and explodes upward through his throat.

“Hey.” Keith is too breathless.

Shiro left his desk lamp on, bathing the room in a low, golden glow that highlights the warm tone of Shiro’s skin and makes this feel far more intimate than it is with the party going on right outside. If Keith strains his ears, he can hear the occasional drunk person stagger by, sometimes alone, sometimes not, usually laughing or shouting or moaning. Keith was just one of those people.

Shiro surprises him by carefully releasing his hold on Keith’s thighs, big hands squeezing once to let him know. Unlatching his ankles, Keith drops his legs one by one and marvels at the inches his long legs have to reach down to get to the floor.

Staring into Shiro’s eyes like this is too much, so Keith closes his and tilts his head up, mouth begging for a kiss that never comes. He loves Shiro’s sloppy, deep, drunken kisses, and without them, he has to fight the urge to pout. Instead, Shiro’s thumb lands on his bottom lip and traces back and forth over kiss-swollen skin, the touch intoxicating for someone as weak for him as Keith is.

Suddenly, a body slams into the other side of the door and it shakes on its hinges, startling both Keith and Shiro as they turn to look at it in unison. The doorknob turns and someone  wrenches the door open, but Shiro is already there to slam it closed, locking it.

Turning back to Keith, Shiro laughs sheepishly. “Frat parties, you know?”

Keith snorts and ducks his head. “Well,” he says, weighing his words in his mind as carefully as he can while tequila swims through his system. “You’ve got me trapped here now. What are you gonna do to me?”

Shiro’s eyes go dark as night, his expression catching Keith off guard. He looks hungry.

His height is almost imposing like this, looming over Keith who keeps his back and shoulders pressed against the wall, having to look up into Shiro’s face in order to hold that intense gaze. It sends shivers down Keith’s spine, and as soon as his hands find their way to Shiro’s waist, Shiro grabs him by the wrists and pins them to either side of Keith’s head, just the barest hint of violence enough to send Keith’s heart racing. His dick throbs and his mouth drops open, a hitched gasp escaping.

“Are you getting kinky on me tonight, Shirogane?”

They share the air between their mouths, and Keith swears he can hear the click of Shiro’s throat as he swallows. With a soft groan, Shiro’s head pitches forward, the tip of his nose pressing into Keith’s hair just above his ear. He whispers, “What if I did?” His breath is hot. “Just let me in, baby, you know I’ll take care of you.”

Keith’s hand makes a fruitless attempt to escape its hold, hoping to latch onto any part of Shiro it can reach, just to ground himself. “Fuck,” he bites out instead. Fuck.

In a whirl of movement, Shiro throws Keith down to the bed and somehow keeps his wrists trapped in the same position against the pillows. He looks so good leaning over Keith like this, from the deep shadows on his face to the breadth of his shoulders. Keith is ravenous and already so ridiculously hard in his jeans that he would hand over all the cash in his wallet right now just for Shiro to do something,  _ anything,  _ to him.

Keith lifts his head for a kiss but just misses Shiro’s mouth, his shoulders as trapped as his hands. This time, he does pout, brow furrowing and bottom lip jutting out without his permission. Sober enough to be coherent but drunk enough to have no control over his facial expressions is how Keith lives his life on the edge, and he gets a front row seat to the glee spreading across Shiro’s face as he realizes what Keith is thinking. Smug looks far,  _ far _ too good on him, and Keith wants to bite it out of his mouth.

“Something you want?” Shiro says, lowering his body just a hint closer. Still too far to kiss.

“Nope.” Keith tries to reassert his dominance with a glare, but he can’t quite lift his gaze from Shiro’s lips. How horribly distracting.

Shiro shifts his weight, thigh dragging right over Keith’s lap, as if he knows. And how could he not—it’s not as if Keith is subtle now or ever, and as Keith strains his hips up for a harder press together, Shiro laughs at him and shifts away again. The way he looks right now, teasing and far too excited, the sweep of his eyelashes, the tiny creases that appear in the corners of his eyes when he smiles—well, Keith has to catch his breath, and he doesn’t want to dwell on why that is.

Their foreheads touch just as Shiro’s thigh grinds hard against Keith, and for one brief moment, their lips almost brush as Keith arches up into the contact. Keith whines, and all Shiro does is laugh.

Unconsciously, Keith presses his hips up against Shiro’s thigh, grinding his dick against hard, thick, perfect muscle and not much else. A whimper catches in the back of his throat.

“Look at you,” Shiro whispers, his breath made sour by tequila but no less enticing. Keith wants to devour him or be devoured; there is nothing in between.

Shiro drives his hips down in a devastating grind that leaves Keith gasping for more. Letting go of Keith’s wrists, Shiro laces his fingers through Keith’s to keep them down instead, twice as intimate as their noses brush and Shiro’s breath fans across his cheek. It’s embarrassing how little Shiro has to do to get Keith this turned on.

Helpless, Keith pushes his hips up to meet Shiro's thigh, again and again until he's practically riding it as Shiro looks on, bottom lip caught between his teeth. His eyes flick back and forth between Keith's gasping face and rolling hips, the look on his face a lot like disbelief.

Keith likes that, and he likes it even more when words fall from Shiro's lips, filthy and encouraging. He calls Keith beautiful and desperate and it hits Keith somewhere deep inside. The brush of Shiro’s thumbs over his hands is almost insignificant, but it digs into a soft place inside Keith that he didn’t know existed, something that makes him want to curl open like a blooming flower. He wants Shiro to call him pretty and slutty and so good, so perfect, and he doesn’t know what this feeling is or why Shiro is so good in bed that mere words curling past his lips are enough to do this to him, but—but—

“Shiro,” Keith gasps.

He’s so close that there’s a tear in the corner of his eye, but it’s not enough. There’s pressure and movement, but it’s muted through two layers of jeans and Keith’s lack of leverage, and not even the scrape of Shiro’s teeth over his jaw can make up for the fact that Shiro is pulling away. Keith cries out, the sound broken, and Shiro shushes him.

Shiro captures Keith’s bottom lip between his, and it’s the first kiss all night in which  Keith has felt such  _ intent.  _ Shiro kisses like he doesn’t have anything left to prove, consuming, wrapping Keith’s entire world up inside his mouth and tilting it irreversibly a couple degrees to the left. Keith strains at the hands holding him in place and tries not to break underneath the weight of Shiro bearing down on him. His mind spins, but this isn’t because of alcohol.

“Tell me what you want,” Shiro growls in between kisses designed to destroy. It’s impossible to keep the shiver from running down Keith’s spine.

It takes him forever to find a break and his breath, too caught up in teeth and lips and hunger, but Keith finds his words. He finds “please” and “I need,” and spits out “everything” like it’s a curse word.

Shiro covers him. It’s a blessing, Keith thinks, that he has never felt this small.

“Will you let me take care of you?” Shiro asks, and in any other context and any other voice, that would mean something completely different, but now it’s filthy.

“Please,” Keith breathes. It’s hardly a word to him anymore.

“Let me finger you,” Shiro says—pleads—begs, actually. “God, baby, I’ll make you feel so good, I promise, I need to me—”

Keith doesn’t let him finish. He hisses,  _ “Yes,”  _ and tries not to explode on the spot.

Shiro finally lets go of his hands in order to start tearing off clothing, but it’s still a slow process because he refuses to takes his mouth off Keith’s. Shiro’s skin is familiar underneath Keith’s hands, warm and smooth, and Keith marvels at every muscle he feels as he touches Shiro’s back and shoulders.

“You’re so hot,” he says, even though that’s supposed to stay an inside thought. He’s told Shiro enough times already, but it’s not Keith’s fault that Shiro’s entire body is a work of art.

“You’d be hotter without these,” Shiro teases, one finger plucking at Keith’s belt loop.

“Then get them off me.”

Shiro makes the fatal mistake of succumbing to Keith’s challenge, and for the first time in a long while, Keith has two free hands and an agenda, and he launches himself at Shiro. He meets no resistance; Shiro goes down to the bed with a laugh and eyes that sparkle, anime style. How embarrassing for him.

“Oh no,” Shiro says, voice full of mirth, “you got me. Whatever will I do?”

Keith fixes Shiro with an unimpressed stare. “Lame,” he says.

Shiro’s eyebrows lift, expression curious and delighted, and Keith takes that moment to grab Shiro by the hands and pin him to the bed instead. He laces their fingers together just like Shiro had, keeps him in place with a proud smirk that’s out of place because he knows without a doubt that Shiro could throw him off whenever he wanted.

But he doesn’t. That’s the key; that’s the thing about him that Keith can’t quite ever get out of his mind. He lets Keith in, encourages him to change the mood from the sheer want of before to the playful sparring they’re doing now. Shiro welcomes Keith’s kiss, mouth opening eagerly. It’s the only disappointing thing about this kiss because Keith wishes he could’ve had the pleasure of coaxing Shiro’s lips apart, encouraging him to open up to Keith.

Still, there’s never a bad kiss where Shiro is concerned.

“You never took your pants off,” Shiro says against Keith’s mouth when they break part.

“Who says you’ve earned that?” Keith asks. He squeezes Shiro’s hands and smirks, a little too proud about his catch. Shiro lunges up, trying to catch another kiss, but Keith dodges, shifting his hips to settle more solidly on Shiro’s stomach.

Shiro sighs, put out, but there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I didn’t know that’s something I have to earn.”

“I just decided.”

“Not fair.” Shiro pouts, his bottom lip pushed out. Keith wants to bite it, so he does, digging his teeth in just enough to sting and then soothing it with a deep kiss. He wants to bruise Shiro’s lips, kiss him so hard and deep that they both ache with it, a sweet pleasure that stings to the very core of his being.

“What if I ate you out?” Shiro breathes, and the words feel so filthy that Keith’s cheeks burn in response. “Is that good enough to get you naked?”

“Y-yeah,” Keith stutters.

Something like a growl rumbles through Shiro’s chest, and then Keith is face down in the sheets before he can register what’s happening. Shiro yanks his hips up, sets Keith on his knees so his fingers can reach around to undo Keith’s pants and tug them down with his underwear just enough to expose his ass. It’s difficult, because Keith takes pride in how tightly he wears his jeans, but it’s all the more rewarding when Shiro finally gets them halfway down his thighs.

Like this, Keith can’t spread his legs. He’s hungry for it though, hungry for the way Shiro says, “I’m gonna make this so good for you, baby,” as he slaps Keith’s ass with one hand and plants the second between Keith’s shoulder blades to push him deeper into the mattress.

It’s oddly reminiscent of their first time. Keith remembers Shiro promising at one point to be the best sex he’s ever had, and in all truth, it was always more of a prediction than a boast. Shiro slaps him again, and Keith angles his neck so he can watch Shiro behind him, kneeling upright on the bed and staring down at Keith’s ass with blatant desire. Keith’s fingers curl into the sheets.

Twice, Shiro has done this, but the touch of his tongue is still exciting. Keith feels like he’s doing something illicit, filthy—and as Shiro licks into him, Keith registers his last bit of control over this situation slipping away. He never meant to challenge Shiro, just wanted to tease him a little, but Shiro clearly took it as a challenge regardless. He acts like a man starving, tongue curling just inside Keith’s rim while he gets the rest of his aggression out on Keith’s arched spine, pressing him down so hard into the bed that Keith almost struggles for breath. A hitched whine falls from Keith’s mouth; he tries to spread his legs wider but it’s impossible.

Finally, Shiro pulls back for breath. He pants against Keith’s skin, hot breath broken only by the press of his lips, and then he dives back in without another word.

Keith is totally drooling into the bedsheets because he can’t close his gasping mouth, but it’s the least of his worries. What makes this time better than every single one of the others is the fact that Shiro hasn’t shaved in a day or two, and the scratch of his stubble against Keith’s skin hurts in a beautiful way.

“God, Shiro,” Keith slurs. He pushes back into Shiro’s mouth, riding the flat of his tongue until the wet, sloppy sounds intensify to unimaginable levels. Keith is burning up from the inside out.

The hand between his shoulders lets up, wrapping around Keith’s thigh instead, and—and, look, Keith can’t see it, but he  _ swears _ Shiro’s hand completely encircles the thickest part of his thigh. If not, it’s close enough to feel that way, and Keith hopes he squeezes hard, presses fingerprints into Keith’s skin. Shiro’s strength alone is enough to make Keith dizzy, but feeling it so viscerally is like throwing oil on a fire.

Keith reaches back in a moment of clarity and tangles his fingers in Shiro’s hair, tugging on his bangs to pull him in deeper. Shiro moans in encouragement, face pressed so deep into Keith that his nose is mashed against Keith’s skin above where his mouth works.

He’s too much, too good. Keith would let Shiro destroy him if he did it just like this.

“Shiro, you gotta—I can’t—stop,  _ please.”  _ The last word is a half-sobbed plea, and everything stops. Shiro, bless him, doesn’t takes his hands off Keith’s skin, but his touch gentles, grounding as Keith catches his breath.

“Keith?” Shiro asks, voice low and far too caring.

“Need to—need my pants off,” Keith says. His voice is thick and wet, and if it weren’t for his dry cheeks, Keith would be crying.

Shiro helps him flop to the side and assists Keith in getting his pants off. He grabs the waistband and peels them off painstakingly, standing to get them past Keith’s ankles and then tossing them to the ground once Keith is finally naked beneath him, sprawled across the sheets. Keith stares up at him, at the wetness drying on Shiro’s chin and the wild look in his eye—he wants to tell Shiro to take off his pants, but he looks powerful standing over Keith with his chest bare and his jeans on. Licking his lips, Keith spreads his legs, propping his heels up on the bed and dragging one hand down his chest.

Shiro looks good standing over him, but he looks even better when he’s lowering his mouth between Keith’s legs, finally joining Keith on the bed.

Closing his eyes at the sensation of Shiro’s mouth sliding down over the head of his cock, Keith registers the sound of a bottle snapping open. Without an exchange of words, Keith plants his feet on the bed, spreading himself open for Shiro to nudge a finger up against him.

He melts into the sensation of Shiro sliding inside, body relaxing because it knows just what to do underneath Shiro. There’s a startling familiarity between their bodies, but Keith welcomes it in—he trusts Shiro to do him right, to take care of him like this, and that trust is empowering. What does Keith need with relationships when he has Shiro now? Shiro, opening up his body, slipping in two fingers when Keith sighs for it, three when Keith begs, a devastating fourth rubbing at his rim as Keith sobs and tries not to scream at how much he wants it—Keith doesn’t need anything more than this.

Keith swears, a drawn out cuss that ends in a hiss when Shiro’s metal fingers twist back inside him, fucking him wet and pried apart. At some point, Shiro’s mouth left his cock so he can stare at this most intimate place of Keith’s. With great effort, Keith cranes his head up so he can take in Shiro’s expression, open-mouthed, dark-eyed, dangerous. His jaw is sharp, his shoulders thick and broad, and Keith would like to throw his legs over them just to admire how delicate his ankles look in comparison.

Keith has to drop his head back with some kind of word dripping from his mouth in a broken whimper. He can’t even think.

He begs and begs until his words don’t taste like words anymore, just more sensations to the counterpoint of Shiro’s fingers bruising Keith’s inner thigh with his grip, keeping him spread wide for Shiro to take until he’s pleased with what Keith has to offer.

“Shiro,” he says, and, “Please,  _ yes.”  _ He says everything that passes through his mind, filter completely offline, and he asks for more like he’s going to die without it. His hands don’t know what to do with themselves but they won’t stay still, and Keith has to fist one hand in his own hair to ground himself with the spark of pain.

“More,” Keith moans, his hips twisting as his heels try to find purchase in the sheets on either side of Shiro’s body.

Shiro chokes out a laugh, half-incredulous, and he drags his teeth again over Keith’s hipbone. “Baby,” he says, and he sounds even more drugged out than Keith feels. “Baby, there isn’t any more, you—there’s—” His voice goes helpless, dark, and electricity zips through Keith’s brain. With shaking fingers, Keith reaches down between his own legs, past Shiro’s head, reaching down to touch. That’s not the back of Shiro’s hand pressing up against him. It's something bigger. Thicker.

Keith breaks. He mouths something incomprehensible to even his own brain, eyes fixed unseeing on the ceiling. He can’t look at Shiro right now.

Shiro’s hand twists, just slightly, and a sob breaks past Keith’s lips. It feels like—like something he doesn’t have words for, filthy and taboo and so incandescent that just the sweet-rough grind of Shiro’s knuckles inside of him brings Keith straight to the brink, faster than he ever has before.

“Baby?”

Belatedly, Keith realizes Shiro has been trying to get his attention but the rushing noise in Keith’s ears isn’t helping, and neither are  the tears falling out of the corners of his eyes. He croaks something out of his throat, a half strangled question.

“Are you okay?” God, Shiro is so sweet, so careful, even now with his—

“Yeah,” Keith gasps. He clenches out of curiosity and swears that Shiro is so deep inside him that Keith can feel it all the way up to his throat. It’s too much in the absolute best way, like smoke curling out of a pile of kindling, fire growing, hoping to raze everything it can touch to the ground. “Oh my god.” Squeezing his eyes shut, Keith tries to make sense of up or down, but he feels like he’s floating somewhere high up above. He grinds down on Shiro, just the barest movement, and it overwhelms him. Unspeakable.

Shiro’s big hand sits over Keith’s hipbone, fingers brushing against his lower stomach and stopping him from pushing up, holding Keith in place almost effortlessly. Keith looks down and can’t help but admire the contrast of his pale belly against the darker skin of Shiro’s knuckles. He has the kind of hands you look at and think  _ those are a man’s hands,  _ big knuckles and wide palms, thick fingers. It’s the kind of size that Keith never thought he would want splitting him open, practically cleaving him in two, but Shiro twists his arm and Keith sees the glint of metal and feels the sheer  _ girth _ inside him, and his brain crackles in excitement.

“Holy fuck,” he says. A moan drips like honey from his lips when Shiro’s teeth set themselves at the inside of his thigh, a parody of a kiss.

“You’re incredible,” Shiro says, worshipful, like Keith wouldn’t do anything for him in this moment. “Wish you could see how you look right now, baby, absolutely perfect.”

Keith chokes out the word  _ how,  _ his slipping feet finally finding a spot to rest. His legs are spread obscenely wide. He means,  _ how is this even possible?  _ but can’t put all those words out in the world right now, not when Shiro touches him like this. Taking him apart.

“You kept begging,” Shiro says against his skin, “and I couldn’t tell you no.”

Biting back a scream that wants out when Shiro rocks his—his  _ fist _ inside Keith, Keith thrashes his head to the side as his hips jerk in some unknown direction, not any more able than Keith is to figure out how to possibly respond to how good this invasion feels. The silence goes on too long, nothing but the ridiculous faded music of the party still going on downstairs and Keith’s hitched moans, and he can’t listen to himself anymore. “Please,” Keith says through a dry mouth, “talk to me, I need—”

“What do you need, baby?” Shiro’s voice is the sweetest thing Keith has ever heard.

“Need you to—oh, fuck.  _ Fuck.”  _ That’s a knuckle right in his sweetest spot, somehow the worst thing he’s ever felt. “Shiro, tell me, please, I can’t—I can’t.”

He’s at that threshold where pleasure becomes pain, where each intoxicating spike of endorphins jolts through his overstimulated body and gets twisted up somewhere deep inside him. Keith aches and whimpers and loves every filthy, brain-bending second of it.

“Shiro—”

“What is it, baby?”

There's nothing in his head but Shiro's name, beating in time to his pulse, and when Shiro pushes his hand in hard, rougher than before but by no means  _ rough,  _ Keith can't help the shout. His leg kicks without his permission and he wheezes Shiro's name again.

Shiro slows to a halt like an asshole. Keith wants to scream. “Baby? Do you need me to stop?” And god help them, he sounds worried, like he thinks he isn't giving Keith the best sex of his life.

“Fuck no,” Keith spits out. He laughs, twisted and hoarse, and reaches out to plant a hand on the wall next to the bed to ground himself. “God, if you—if you stop, I swear I’m gonna kill you.”

The hand moves; Keith can’t describe what it’s doing or how it’s making him feel, he just wants to contain the feeling. Shiro sucks a bruise into his thigh and noses forward until his breath fans cool over his hand grinding inside Keith.

“I can’t believe you,” Shiro says. His voice is barely more than a rough whisper. “You’re so good, baby, look at you.”

Shiro’s attention is more addictive than any drug Keith has ever known. The way his tongue flicks out, curious, tracing around the curve of his wrist—intoxicating, to put it mildly.

He sobs out Shiro’s name and something wholly radiant takes him—it might be an orgasm, but it’s the weirdest orgasm Keith has ever had. It crescendos and breaks in equal measure, refusing to let him get a hold on what it is exactly that he’s feeling. Vaguely, there’s an awareness of Shiro’s hand stroking his cock, pushing him through it, and Keith bucks his hips up once too hard and whimpers at the tug deep inside him. He’s so full and it’s all Shiro—Shiro with his hand pushing inside, dragging knuckles over Keith’s prostate, fucking him open so wide that it scares Keith to think too hard about it.

His mind clouds and clouds until he can’t see anything; maybe his eyes are shut or maybe he’s astral projected into another realm. It’s unclear. Keith hears the nasty wet sounds of Shiro’s infuriating grinding still inside him, and he fixates on it so much that it drowns out the sound of his moaning. This is the best and worst thing he’s ever felt. He hopes Shiro understands.

Awareness filters in by degrees. He feels the sheets against his body first, rucked up and wrinkled from his flailing about. Sweat cools on his skin as his chest heaves without rhythm. 

At some point, the bed shifts and Shiro rolls off to drift away from the bed, out of Keith’s immediate sphere of attention. He returns with a washcloth and a  glass of water.

Keith chugs half the water without a word, smacking his lips together at the end as Shiro takes it back from him. Shiro sits on the bed beside him with one hand gently touching Keith’s wrist as he stares down at Keith with a small smile on his face. Keith blinks, not sure if he’s sleepy or shocked.

“How’re you doing?”

Taking a quick stock, Keith gets his mouth in working order again. “Great,” he says. He shifts his hips and no pain shoots through him, just the normal dull ache from taking something maybe too much too fast. “C’mere.”

With a flick of his wrist, Keith beckons Shiro to climb back over him, denim rubbing against Keith’s bare skin. He’s still so hard, easily noticeable in the front of his pants, and desire instantly begins to trickle back through Keith’s veins. Shiro kisses him, easy like the slowly ebbing tide, and Keith wraps his fingers around thick biceps and lets himself slip into the moment. The soft press of lips, the brush of skin against skin, the contrast of stubble around a smooth mouth—Keith loses himself. 

“You were so good for me,” Shiro says, pressing the words into the vulnerable skin behind the hinge of Keith’s jaw. “God, you’re just—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, face pressed tight to Keith’s neck.

“Just what?” Keith breathes. 

There’s a tension in the air that wasn’t present the moment before, and a wild thought crosses Keith’s mind that Shiro is about to back out of their arrangement. Shiro dispels it with a dark-edged laugh as he rises to meet Keith’s eyes.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he admits. One finger traces Keith’s bottom lip, pushing just hard enough to dip inside. On instinct, Keith flicks his tongue against it, tasting salt and warm metal. Shiro looks on, entranced, and he pushes deeper, Keith’s mouth opening up around his welcomed invasion. “God, I want you,” Shiro says, rough and unhurried as his dark eyes bore into Keith and crack him open. The way he looms over Keith, big, broad, and imposing, sends shivers down Keith’s spine.

A second finger abruptly joins the first, practically fucking his mouth with the same hand Shiro just used to split him open. Keith moans; his eyes flutter shut and his hips twitch as warmth pools between his legs for the second time that night. 

Shiro kisses him around his fingers. Keith wishes it didn’t make him whimper.

The fingers withdraw along with Shiro’s mouth, and Keith can’t seem to catch his breath. He watches Shiro lean over the side of the bed, traces one hand down the flex of his muscles and shifting skin, and his eyes stayed fixed there until Shiro laughs at him. As if he doesn’t know exactly what he looks like.

The bottle of lube clicks open for the second time that night, and as much as Keith wants it—well, his body protests the idea though his mind doesn't. “Shiro,” he says, “I don't think I can—”

But Shiro interrupts him. “Nah, I'm not gonna fuck you tonight.” Shiro sits up straighter, shuffling his balance so he's kneeling more firmly over Keith's hips. “I remember you promising me something else, though, and I haven't forgotten it.”

Keith takes an embarrassingly long time to figure out what Shiro means by that, but the sight of Shiro getting his own fingers wet to reach behind himself is . . . not subtle.

“Fuck,” Keith whispers.

“That's the idea, baby.”

Keith's eyes are sharp as he watches Shiro's expression. He knows the moment Shiro pushes a finger inside himself because his mouth drops open on a tiny gasp and a tiny wrinkle forms between his eyebrows. 

Keith grabs Shiro by the hips, fingers reaching around to dig into his ass. “God, yes,” Keith says. He feels drunk again, high on the power and satisfaction of knowing how much Shiro wants him. “Can’t believe we haven’t done this yet.”

Shiro hums in agreement. He pours more lube on his fingers, shifting his position again slightly to push them back inside, and Keith’s only complaint is that he isn’t watching the way Shiro stretches open around his own fingers. Instead, Keith slides a hand in, tracing lightly over Shiro’s rim. He groans in agreement, two fingers working furiously to get him ready, and Keith has to swallow down a moan. He wants to feel Shiro so badly.

“Let me help,” Keith says, and it comes out like begging. He teases with the tip of one finger, getting it just wet enough to press inside no deeper than his first knuckle, but Shiro gasps out a choked sound and Keith can’t find it in himself to just tease anymore. 

“You don’t know how much I’ve thought about this,” Shiro says, something wild in his voice as if he’s almost completely lost control of it. “Fucking myself open on your cock, thinking about all the different faces you might make.” He plants his free hand solidly in the middle of Keith's chest and puts his weight on it, bending his elbow to lean closer and get a better angle inside him. “You're gonna feel so good inside me.”

Keith groans in response, swearing under his breath as Shiro leans close enough that the fringe of his hair just brushes Keith's forehead. It's a struggle to keep his breath steady under the pressure, but Keith is surprised by how that makes him feel—he’s not nervous or scared or unhappy about the situation. Instead, he's burning for it, for the sensation of being almost completely owned, and it doesn't matter that Shiro's fingers have disappeared, leaving two of Keith's stretching him, fucking him. Keith is no more in charge of himself or this situation than he was when Shiro  _ fisted  _ him on a whim. 

“Put another finger in,” Shiro says, and there’s no question that Keith will obey. He stretches Shiro maybe too quickly, but he can’t help his excitement—Shiro is tight and hot and silky around his fingers, and he can only imagine how good it’s going to be to fuck him. “Oh, that feels good.”

Shiro practically writhes in pleasure. He tosses his head when Keith hits a certain angle, his hands slip across Keith’s skin, fingers tugging at a nipple for a moment and tracing back down his chest. Taking his own cock in hand, Shiro strokes himself once, twice, light and probably torturous, but Shiro sighs into it like it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. 

Keith doesn’t realize Shiro is trying to put on a show until he scrapes his nails down his own chest and through the thin trail of hair leading down his abs while he touches himself and rolls his body back onto Keith’s fingers. It figures, Keith thinks faintly, that Shiro’s huge hand looks right at home wrapped around his cock, big as it is. Keith’s felt both of them inside him, and he’s never considered himself much of a size queen, but—god, but maybe he is. It’s hard to argue with the evidence of how thirsty Keith is for Shiro.

“Think I’m good,” Shiro says. It takes Keith a moment to place what he’s talking about.

“You sure?”

Shiro just nods in response, reaching for the lube again. He slicks up Keith’s cock while Keith sends a hearty thank you to the universe that they’ve both collectively moved on from condoms.

And then, finally, Shiro—

He doesn’t do what Keith expects him to.

Shiro teases him. He rubs his ass on Keith’s wet cock like he’s only ever seen in  _ porn,  _ acting like it’s normal to hold Keith’s cock steady and keep catching his rim on the head and laughing at Keith when he gasps, expecting the push inside. Instead, it’s just back and forth, slow and steady, until Keith is squirming underneath him, hips twitching despite the fact that he can’t get the angle right. There’s something in Shiro’s face, an almost evil glint in his eye.

“God, come  _ on,”  _ Keith says, frustrated as Shiro teases over him again, pressing just hard enough against Keith’s cock to make him think he’s finally going to get to fuck Shiro. It doesn’t happen. “Asshole.”

But Shiro just smirks instead.  “Desperate,” Shiro says, the words razor sharp. “Getting you off once wasn’t enough?”

“I swear I’m—”

Keith goes for the fight, surging upwards to try to flip Shiro with the element of surprise. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work, and Shiro slams him down by the wrists, a harsher echo of their earlier motions. Keith doesn’t have the leverage to twist his arms out of Shiro’s grasp.

“Someone’s bratty tonight,” Shiro says. When he leans forward like this, his cock slides against Keith’s heaving stomach, leaving behind a trail of wetness as he grinds his hips down. Keith tries again to get on top and is again thwarted; his only blessing is that Shiro’s biceps bulge to keep him down, Keith’s mouth running dry. 

He says too late, “Don’t call me that.”

“Bratty?” Another rough roll of Shiro’s hips. “Feisty, maybe.”

“You’re being an asshole,” Keith says, but it’s a weak, pathetic protest. His greedy gaze traces every flex of Shiro’s muscles shifting above him. Shiro looks impossibly tall like this, somehow more imposing than he’s ever been, acting for all the world like this is the only place he wants to be. He’s powerful and strong and sensuous, and Keith wants to see part of that smug, in charge façade drop away with Keith buried inside him, watch his mouth drop open automatically as he stretches around Keith, opening for him. 

But Shiro is all challenge tonight, full of a smug assurance that Keith wishes he would stop being attracted to. He just laughs at Keith’s words, careless because he doesn’t understand that it makes Keith’s heart flip in his chest. 

“Hurry up,” Keith says, more of a whine than he wants to admit to. 

“Shut up,” Shiro tells him. His tone is affectionate despite his words, but it makes Keith want to challenge him.

He demands, “Or what?” Shiro is ready with an answer.

“Or I'll shut you up myself.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“I wouldn't?” Shiro leans down real close and slaps his hand over Keith's mouth. “Remember when I fucked you at the gym, you liked it so much when I did this to you, never wanted me to stop, you were practically screaming. Maybe I should make you.”

Keith gnashes his teeth until Shiro’s hand slips away. “Make me what? Make me scream or make me shut up? You can’t have both.”

Unceremonious, Shiro shoves two fingers back inside Keith’s mouth

“Beg for it, baby,” Shiro whispers. “Ask to be allowed to fuck me.”

Keith glares at him, voice trapped around Shiro’s fingers, and as infuriating as this is, Keith has never been harder in his life. Shiro tells him again to beg to sink his cock inside, to be allowed the privilege, and Keith closes his eyes. He can’t meet Shiro’s gaze while he tries to speak, spitting out a garbled version of the word please. 

That gets him something—Shiro sits back with purpose, working just the head of Keith’s cock inside him and stopping there. The amount of power in his thighs is incredible, for him to hold himself up at an angle like this. He raises his eyebrows at Keith, expectant.

So he says please again, eyes open this time, humiliating in a way that makes his face flush, heart pound, and cock twitch; Shiro’s gleefully dark gaze bores into him. Each pleading word earns Keith a little more, just a fraction of an inch lower, until Shiro is seated all the way down, the intensity of his face broken by the blissful expression that overtakes him as he adjusts. He’s every bit as beautiful as Keith had hoped, so much so that Keith can’t figure out what to do with his hands. He pets over Shiro’s thighs, which somehow didn’t shake from the exertion of lowering himself down so steadily and slowly, grabbing at his ass and pressing his fingerprints into the skin of Shiro’s abs. 

“God,” Shiro breathes out. A smile quirks the corners of his mouth as he gives an experimental roll of his hips. His fingers slip out of Keith’s mouth, but Keith is without words.

He moans underneath Shiro, caught up in the sensation of Shiro lifting up and rolling back down, just an inch, maybe two, but enough to convince Keith that he doesn’t actually want to be on top of Shiro right now. Not if it means he misses the euphoria and power practically wafting off Shiro, his hands sliding over Keith’s chest as he finds a spot to plant them  and steady himself.

“If you could see your face right now,” Shiro says, teasing and breathless all at once. 

Keith would blush if he could, so instead he says, “This is—you feel so good, Shiro, I can’t—”

Shiro rocks upward and Keith chases him with a snap of his hips, startling a moan out of Shiro and he grins at Keith. He’s devilish.

And that’s all they need. Shiro sets a slow, rough pace, slamming himself down hard on Keith’s cock. His harsh breathing fills the air as Keith’s fingers bruise Shiro’s hips, grip urging him on while Keith’s own hips rise to meet him. It’s all incredible, but it’s the sensation of being caught entirely in Shiro’s gaze that gets to him, makes him break until he’s saying Shiro’s name like a prayer. 

“You like—you like that?” Shiro asks. He pants, open-mouthed.

It’s the most ridiculous question but Keith chokes out a yes all the same. Something about how Shiro looks right now renders him speechless, but Shiro fills the silence for him. He’s good for that, for scorching Keith straight through with his words.

But even as Shiro tells him filthy things about how much he loves Keith’s cock and wants to take him apart, there’s a niggling thought in the back of Keith’s brain that tells him this time is different. He can’t remember ever staring into Shiro’s eyes like this before. It isn’t just the position, though, because it feels purposeful, like Shiro is determined to keep his eyes open and his head up for Keith.

Shiro breaks his train of thought by leaning down and planting a thick, messy kiss on Keith’s open mouth. “Maybe when I’m done using you I’ll flip you back over and slide right back inside you,” he says against Keith’s lips, punctuated by the harsh pant of his breath. His ass feels tighter in this position, the angle forcing him to slow and making every drag of Keith’s cock inside him just that much rougher. Keith just nods, kisses him again, because he’s already forgotten everything they did before and he doesn’t care about stupid things like whether it’ll hurt too much to walk out of here in the morning. Maybe he wants it to, maybe he wants Shiro’s searing gaze on the hitch in his step. More fuel for the fire.

Shiro bites his lip and Keith loses himself.

“Can—can I—” Shiro asks, but it isn’t even a full question and Keith is already nodding his head. He only half understands what Shiro wants and that’s enough for him. It isn’t a surprise when the hand wraps around the base of his throat. Shiro’s left hand is planted by Keith’s ear, holding him steady and too close while he fucks himself on Keith and stares straight down into his eyes, ravenous and inky. 

Keith gasps for breath out of sheer shock at the bolt of arousal that slams through him. Shiro isn’t pressing hard, not enough to actually cut off his airflow, but the idea—the hint of it, it’s something Keith’s never consciously thought about before, but it feels so right that he can’t believe it never occurred to him to ask for this earlier.

He mouths Shiro’s name, and for just three seconds, Shiro presses hard enough that Keith can’t breathe.

That’s all the time he needs to tip over the edge and come, his orgasm taking him by complete surprise as he arches up, eyes slamming shut. He fists one hand in the top of Shiro’s hair, urging him in for a kiss that never happens. Instead, Shiro bites at his neck while Keith’s vision whites out.

He’s pretty sure he screams Shiro’s name.

Heavy warmth settles in Keith’s limbs as he comes down from the high, blinking his eyes open to stare into Shiro’s. He’s still moving on top of Keith, little, impatient nudges of his hips that make it really easy for Keith to fight through his dry mouth and tell Shiro what he wants.

“Do it,” Keith says before he can catch his breath. “Do—like you said. Finish inside.”

It’s like lightning strikes, the trace of ozone in the air and the crashing of Keith’s heart in his chest. Shiro doesn’t flip him over. He practically throws himself to the side and gets two hands under Keith’s thighs, pressing them back against his chest and spreading him open with a terrible ease.

Keith’s toes curl at the first instance of Shiro’s cock nudging at his entrance, and he shouts, too loud, when Shiro pushes inside. He’s rough on Keith and it should hurt, it should but—

“Fuck me,” Keith cries, widening the spread of his thighs so he can claw at Shiro’s shoulders, drag his body closer to break that awful eye contact. All he gets is a kiss instead, wild and savage, and Shiro’s rhythm starts to break in a matter of seconds as he stutters to a halt inside Keith.

Time slows to a crawl. Shiro drops to the side as he slides out, letting Keith’s legs relax. But because he’s Shiro and he’s nasty about these things, only about ten seconds pass before two fingers are prodding at his hole, slipping through the mess there and sending shivers up Keith’s spine.

He makes a disgruntled noise when it gets to be too much for his oversensitive body. Shiro apologizes with a kiss on the corner of his mouth and withdraws, wiping his fingers clean on the edge of the bed. Gross, but Keith can’t bring himself to care.

It takes an indeterminable number of minutes for Keith to find his voice.

“Do you mind if I stay?” Keith asks, eyes already drooping shut. Shiro’s mattress is nicer than his own is and Keith is so tired and already sore.

Shiro laughs and he wiggles around until he’s settled comfortably between Keith and the wall, laying on his side propped on one elbow. “Why would I mind?”

Keith contemplates not bothering to answer that question in favor of slipping right into sleep, but his mind finds some words that sort of make sense. “It’s not exactly normal,” Keith says. Shiro cocks an eyebrow at him. “Y’know. For our whole . . . thing.”

“And what thing would that be?” There’s mirth in his eyes, and he smiles down at Keith easily, free hand on his hip and bare chest on full display. It’s almost enough to distract Keith, who still wants to stare despite the fact that he’s  _ been _ staring for at least an hour. Shiro’s just hot enough for that.

“You know,” Keith says eventually. “We just agreed on it.”

Again, Shiro laughs. “But I want to hear you say it.”

There isn’t a lot of room left on the bed, so Keith rolls onto his own side and moves backward a little until they’re touching just the right amount—Keith’s back brushing Shiro’s chest, their legs bumping every now and then. Keith’s eyes are already closed when Shiro’s arm hooks loosely around his waist and nudges him until he answers. “I dunno what we’re calling it,” Keith says through a yawn. “Friends with benefits, I guess?”

“You—what?”

“What?”

Shiro sits up so abruptly that he dislodges Keith. “What do you mean? We’re not—I mean, this isn’t exactly that.”

“Uh, I think this is the definition of friends with benefits,” Keith says, dry and careless in the moment. He wants  _ sleep.  _ “But we can find another word if you want.”

“Keith, you’re—wait a minute. Wait.” There’s distress evident in Shiro’s voice, breaking through the warm haze in Keith’s mind. 

Slowly, Keith sits up. Alarm bells go off in his head.

“You think I want to be friends with benefits,” Shiro says. 

Oh god. Shiro’s tone—something has gone terribly, completely, horribly wrong, and Keith is left to grasp at threads. “What could have  _ possibly  _ given you that idea? I told you I liked you, I asked you out on dates, I—”

“No, I mean,” Keith says, trying to salvage this situation. “I know you don’t really want—”

“Don’t really want  _ what,  _ Keith? What did you decide I don’t want?”

Keith just gapes at him, open-mouthed and stupid, because he hasn’t the faintest clue what the appropriate thing to say in this situation might be. He was so sure they had worked it out, that they understood what they were doing and why, but Keith never suspected for a minute that Shiro already thought they were going out. Keith thought that was the kind of thing you had to say out loud.

Shiro breaks eye contact with him finally, head dropping so low his chin almost brushes against his neck. It’s strange, Keith realizes distantly, to be so close to Shiro without him reaching out for touch. That’s part of who Shiro is, at least to Keith; he’s handsy and tactile, sometimes to the point that Keith gets uncomfortable, but that sudden absence is jarring. 

“I think,” Shiro starts, but he cuts himself off to shake his head. He’s avoiding Keith’s gaze. “Sorry. I think you should go, actually.” Shit. Shiro’s voice sounds shaky, and Keith doesn’t want to believe he’s about to cry.

“I told you I don’t want anything to change,” Keith says, but it’s a feeble protest at best. 

“Yeah, well,” Shiro says. God, he sounds heartbroken. Keith didn’t mean for this to go so wrong. “I don’t think this is going to work if you’re not—interested in a relationship.” It looks like it makes him sick to say it, and Keith can’t bring himself to push it. 

It’s like the bottom has dropped out of Keith’s stomach, leaving him open and vulnerable. “Right.” Keith nods and swallows, slowly standing up from the bed.

He locates his clothing piece by piece, scattered to all four corners of the room when Shiro threw them impatiently away. There’s a hitch in Keith’s step, but desire feels hundreds of miles away, and he skips the trouble of properly lacing and tying his boots. He tugs his shirt over his head; the collar tugs roughly down his nose, a raw scrape to match how his throat hurts right now. Shiro’s silence is stony. 

Patting down his pockets—wallet, keys, student ID card—he finds everything in its place. 

“Okay,” Keith says, awkward. “Bye, then.” His tongue feels too big for his mouth. He starts for the door.

“Wait.” Keith stutters to a halt, but he doesn’t turn around. It’s not worth it to see Shiro’s face while he tells Keith something like how Shiro hates him now and never wants to see him again. But then again, Shiro is always full of surprises. “You didn’t bring a jacket, did you?”

Cautiously, Keith turns just enough to catch sight of Shiro in his periphery, still shirtless and unmoving on the bed. “Uh, no.”

Shiro sighs and an internal battle plays out obviously over his face. Finally, he says, “Take the jacket hanging on the hook there.” He nods at the door where a thick, dark gray zip up hoodie hangs by its hood. 

“I don’t need—”

“Just take it, Keith,” Shiro says. He sounds so defeated that Keith moves as if on autopilot—he can’t say no to Shiro on a good day.

Without another word, Keith stumbles out the door, still tugging the hoodie around him, and runs straight into the chest of some random frat boy, probably one of Shiro’s brothers. He shouts at the sight of Keith—who probably looks fresh from sex hell, if he’s honest—and immediately starts shouting and raising his hands for a high-five. Keith pushes past with a single mission in mind; he doesn’t know what time it is, but he figures if there was ever a day he deserves to splurge on an Uber, today is that day, and he’s not going to stand around in the middle of a party waiting for his car. It doesn’t matter how bitterly cold the air will feel outside.

Getting outside is difficult, but he manages. Keith has half a thought about searching for Pidge, but she doesn’t deserve to be pulled away from the party just because he’s heading home. He might be embarrassed about the misunderstanding and a little disappointed by Shiro’s reaction right now, but that’s it. That’s the only problem, and he doesn’t need to involve her. Keith has this under control.

But standing on the front lawn of a partying frat house, wrapped up in a hoodie that smells like Shiro, Keith starts to think he might have fucked this up.

It’s not a great feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up next: booty shorts & major damage control
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com)   
>  [frat au headcanons & extra content](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com/tagged/frat%20au)   
>  [twitter](http://twitter.com/disloyalpunk)   
>  [frat au playlist](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fopen.spotify.com%2Fuser%2Ftmwec387u6xznz1uqwvbnb0ic%2Fplaylist%2F6LdydV20uvrJnSwUC5TXOX%3Fsi%3DX7_cBxNbThCUc4ze432xQQ&t=ZjMyM2EwNDZiMTM3NThjZDgzMjgxMmMwYjE5ZmQxYzI0ODdiM2NkYyxvcGRvbVVJYg%3D%3D&b=t%3ABOIVI0DcLn4kw-eHXAfhIw&p=http%3A%2F%2Fdisloyalpunk.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F177085055523&m=0)

**Author's Note:**

> (:
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://disloyalpunk.tumblr.com)


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